● 11.08.09

● Links 08/11/2009: Good Mandriva and Ubuntu Reviews

Posted in News Roundup at 8:17 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• The IT@School project in Kerala (where desktops replaced Microsoft’s Windows operating system with FOSS), the public sector behemoths Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and New India Assurance Company and an unnamed private e-commerce firm are among the key case studies presented. For example, at the LIC, which handles digital data pertaining to over 100 million insurance policies, 3,500 servers and 30,000 desktops (across about 2,155 offices) run on GNU/Linux.

• This is the best way to try out Linux. You download an .iso file (a full copy of a CD), and you burn it onto a CD with an iso burning program like: Infrarecorder or ImgBurn (Or nero). Then you reboot your PC. Most likely it will already boot from the CD, but if it does not set it in the BIOS. (Press the setup key at boot (F2, F8, DEL etc.) and search for something like: Boot Settings, or Boot Device Priority. Then put your CD/DVD drive at the top. Now save & exit. Then your PC will boot from CD.)

• Sometimes we in the Linux “world” get a bit carried away with a piece of software. We get into out little geek niches and form clubs and setup forums. We have fun with it. Sometimes though, we get a bit “too” carried away. When you live in a digital world and you begin to spend too much time online, the line between reality and virtual reality can get hazy.

Kernel Space

• But first, let me point out where we agree: I think his recent blog post about what Android/Linux is not should be read by everyone interested in software freedom for mobile devices. (Harald’s post also refers to a presentation by Matt Porter. I agree with Harald that talk is worth looking at closely.) The primary point Matt and Harald both make is one that Stallman has actually made for years: Linux is an operating system kernel, not a whole system for a user. That’s why I started saying Android/Linux to refer to this new phone platform. It’s just the kernel, Linux, with a bunch of Java stuff on top. As Matt points out, it doesn’t even use a common Linux-oriented C Library, such as uClibc or the GNU C Library; it used a BSD-derived libc called Bionic.

Applications

• While IE 8 will run and render web pages just fine there is still a large number of problems/bugs that remain to be resolved before you will want to use the browser on Linux on a daily basis.

• I scored a nice deal on a Focusrite Saffire Pro 26 Firewire recording interface. My studio PC does not have Firewire so I also bought a SIIG PCI Firewire 400 card and a 6-pin to 6-pin cable. Focusrite is a good supporter of the FFADO project, which writes Linux drivers for Firewire recording devices. (I do not understand Linux users who make themselves crazy trying to force an unsupported or poorly-supported piece of hardware to work on Linux. So they save a couple bucks, it’s still a losing proposition.)

• From here on out, game reviews for abandonware DOSBox titles should be in the fall and winter. Who wants to play video games when it’s 76 and sunny out? But after the time change, when the sun drops dead as soon as you get off work and the frost is forming by six, that’s the time when you want classic DOS video games. Because there’s only so many hours you can spend reading the Internet before you go all Jack Nicholson on the snowbound household.

Audio

Games

• I had a lot of free time last weekend so I had a chance to annihilate stuff by playing another first person shooter game on my Linux box. The game is called Tremulous and it’s not a typical FPS since it incorporates elements of real-time strategy that makes it even more fun and challenging.

KDE

• One of the few utility programs that are used every day on mobile devices is a wireless networking tool, but somehow this is one of the last applications to appear for KDE 4. With the autumn 2009 crop of Linux distributions, a usable client for the widely used NetworkManager system finally makes its debut.

• This is the result of a job done by A group of Students, having Sandro Andrade as a Mentor and me as quick problem solver,

Distributions

• VMware put the kibosh on rumors that it is developing a full-fledged Linux operating system. But, it may well be working on a streamlined Linux distribution for virtual appliances or, perhaps, to underpin VMware’s recently acquired Spring framework. This would bring greater consistency to the look and feel of VMware applications and would be a Just enough Operating System (or JeOS).

Mandriva

• Mandriva, in my opinion, has the best KDE implementation around. They proved it once again with this release. The KDE edition is just awesome. I have not looked at the GNOME edition yet. Having used Mandriva’s GNOME edition for the past year and a half, I think that would be just as great. I am anyway giving it a spin in the coming days. I would definitely recommend Mandriva 2010 to any one who wants to get started with Linux or try out a great distribution.

• For beginner to expert it is the excellent distro, a perfect window killer and better then Windows any version whether its XP,Vista or 7. So what you are looking for try once and forget everything.

New Releases

• # 07-Nov-2009: Release 5.0.0 is available for download. “Slax” is updated to version 6.1.2 (customized for better user experience), “System Rescue CD” is updated to version 1.3.1, “Puppy Linux” is updated to version 4.3.1, “Parted Magic” is updated to version 4.5 and “Tiny Core” is updated to version 2.4.1. New feature has been added: “boot.kernel.org” (BKO) is available as boot option. This allowes you to boot your PC from remote location (internet). Visit http://boot.kernel.org for more information.

• Amahi version 4.2 is released. Amahi Linux Home Server is a server targeted for home and home office environments.

• The Moblin project released the first beta of Moblin 2.1, fixing numerous bugs while adding support for a 3G modem. Other touted improvements to the netbook-focused Moblin 2.1 include a faster browser with plugin support, Bluetooth discovery support, higher screen resolution support, and an enhanced ConnMan.

• We are pleased to announce the release of paldo 1.20 with many bug fixes and updates.

• Enhancements to point out:

• * GNOME 2.28.1 * OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 * Firefox 3.5.5 * Linux 2.6.31.5 * X.org server 1.7.1

Red Hat Family

• This week Red Hat shipped the second major update to the KVM-based virtualisation product portfolio it unveiled in February 2009. This update goes a long way towards enabling KVM to stand its ground against competing virtualisation technologies.

Ubuntu

• Ubuntu 9.10 is out. I’m running it on three machines. On the two that had 9.04 previously running on them, the upgrade was essentially the push of a button. That was awesome. On the machine that had been running 8.04, I went with a CD burned copy. It did fine as well.

• I have read a few articles about people getting burned by 9.10 but I honestly haven’t had any issues. The only weirdness I noticed was some audio stuttering on a work box and that when I shut down an audio player, the display disappears a bit before the sound stops. Not what I’d call show stoppers.

• I’ll admit it right away: I’m a Windows fanboy, so testing Ubuntu as a work platform less than two weeks after the launch of Windows 7 seems a bit weird.

• [...]

• So far, all is well, with one exception. We use Microsoft Exchange 2007 for e-mail, contacts and calendars, and I have not been able to get my account up and running in Evolution. If anyone has any tips, I’d appreciate it.

• I love Windows 7 but I can’t give up by favorite Linux OS either. So, I finally decided to do a Performance Benchmark Showdown to decide who gets to rule on my PC. Probably, everyone knows what’s new in both of them.

• [...]

• All said and done, if you need performance, Ubuntu is for you. If you are looking onGaming, you have no other choice than Windows. If you are looking at Features again Windows 7 is the one for you.

• The Ubuntu Marketing team has existed for ages but has been a little unstructured, lacked a vision with a path of action and thus its potential has not been reached this far. Some good project have been created there (The Fridge and the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter being the greatest examples) but it’s been a long time since some palpable progress has been made. And that’s just sad, because we can make this team suck less and produce more.

• One interesting thing about the report is how heavily they focus on the Koala as the mascot of the release. Ubuntu generally takes the view that its release mascots are used only during the development phase, and that the final version when released should be referred to by its version number (Ubuntu 9.10, in this case). However the way that the programme focused on the image of the Koala demonstrates that people will find it easy to associate with such mascots.

• I’ve been living with with Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” for more than few days, and I’m very happy over all…but there are still a few things that disappointed me about this release. Here are my top 5 best things about Karmic, followed my top 5 things that really should’ve been addressed prior to release date.

Devices/Embedded

• Early in the summer, IPTV startup Myka delivered an impressive Linux-based device which was not quite a set-top box and not quite a home theater PC (HTPC). Though the device’s identity was sort of nebulous, the company’s goal was crystal clear: to easily make the tons of different types of Internet video content viewable on the TV.

• Kontron has added a compact Intel Atom-powered device to its range of thin-client HMI (human machine interface) subsystems. The fanless Nano Client 10.4 has a touchscreen display, features a sealed stainless steel housing, uses CompactFlash storage, and runs Linux, the company says.

• We know that the Motorola Droid has launched today, but it is not the only Google Android device launching. We have just learned that the Android Media Platform (AMP) has popped up out of nowhere, for those who do not know, the device is an OLED Android 2.0 Handheld.

Phones

• Onlookers say that Google is in charge of Android development, despite pitching the software as a community project. But experts say that could be the only way Google can ensure that the software is actually released.

• Google’s Android operating system seems to be gathering pace, with more and more phones emerging that run the Open Source mobile OS – in the past few months we’ve reviewed the Samsung i7500 Galaxy, HTC Hero and HTC Magic.

• Are there good reasons for Google to have a majority control of the development? I personally think there is as it is often the loose control of the open source label that limits things from being done. I also don’t think we would have had Android 2.0 as quickly. Said Bill Maggs, head of developer and partner content and services at Sony Ericsson. “Google is largely at this point definitely driving the framework.”

• I’ve been following the development of smartphones, tablets, and single-purpose devices for quite a while in this blog, but every time I think that the market for e-book readers has calmed down, another announcement in the sector adds a new competitive dimension. A couple of weeks ago, Barnes & Noble introduced its own e-book reader, the Nook, just ahead of the holiday shopping season.

• More than a hundred people were lined up at midnight Thursday outside a Verizon Wireless store in midtown Manhattan to be among the first people to buy the new Motorola Droid.

• Hoping to buy new Motorola Droid smartphones, more than 20 people waited in line in 40-degree weather for the 7 a.m. opening of a Boston-area Verizon Wireless store.

• The launch was repeated at hundreds of Verizon stores nationally early today, including a midnight opening at the downtown Manhattan Verizon store where a crowd also gathered, Verizon officials said. A downtown Boston Verizon store also had a small crowd turn up for the Droid’s opening day.

• Android 2.0 (formerly codenamed ‘Éclair’) is the latest evolution of the mobile OS developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance.

• This version is a chunky upgrade, superceding the current Android 1.6 software (dubbed ‘Donut’), which was actually considered “a minor platform release”.

• Verizon Wireless announced its second Android phone, the $100 Droid Eris, which is based closely on the HTC Hero and its Sense UI. In related news, HTC is upgrading the Hero to Android 2.0, and Motorola announced a Europe-destined multi-touch, GSM version of the Droid called the Milestone.

Sub-notebooks

• One Laptop per Child chairman Nicholas Negroponte told Xconomy that OLPC is prepping an ARM-based version 1.75 of its XO netbook while planning to release a “paper-thin” version 3.0 in 2012. Meanwhile, the Internet Archive is providing OLPC users with 1.6 million e-books, says the nonprofit organization.

• BoomingBang, a RPG game, whose release is due till late OCTOBER 09. The BoomingBang project, started by me, Abhishek Indoria, initially, and a friend, was a small deployment. It was started in March 2009, when none of them (us, actually) have heard of OLPC. Back again, in June, 2 XO laptops were requested, and the project was started officially.

• After ABI Research projected that Linux will take a 32 percent share of netbooks in 2009 and wo;; overtake Windows in 2013, we spoke with ABI analyst Jeffrey Orr on the findings. Orr notes the rise of international consumers and ARM Cortex-A8-based netbooks, and discusses Ubuntu, Moblin, Android, and Chrome OS.

• Elonex offers a range of netbooks, with its latest offering being the ONEt, which aims to bring portable computing to the masses at a low price.

Free Software/Open Source

• Forty internationally known leaders in open education and technology met in Barcelona on October 19-20, 2009, at the NMC’s first official European event, the Open EdTech Summit, cosponsored by the Open University of Catalunya and the New Media Consortium. Together, this extraordinary group considered the question of how to design educational institutions that fully embrace open education as means of being truly responsive to the needs of contemporary society and of today’s students.

• Can you see a pattern here? Another large organization using Drupal to build an add-on site.

• In almost every resilience scenario I can imagine, there seems to be an intense need for people that can fix, repurpose, replicate, or build from scratch machines, systems, and tools. Essentially, hackers. They are needed in roles from maintenance of existing social activity to externally focused trade to local defense/offense. The implication is that if you don’t have people in your community, group, gang, or tribe that can do this, you only have two options: either a bare bones existence (hardscrabble) or a predatory one.

• Kirk Wylie and the OpenGamma team have announced the Fudge Messaging Project, an open source message encoding protocol. Fudge (Fast Unstructured Data Generic Encoding) is designed to be a self-describing, type-safe, binary hierarchical encoding suitable for use in messaging layers in middleware. The project is in its early days, but already has Java and C# reference implementations. The Java implementation is in daily use at OpenGamma and is, according to Wylie, “rock-solid in stability and very good in performance”. What is still to come is “polished releases” says Wylie, but the developers wanted to get the code out as soon as they reasonably could.

• First, a blast from the past. To be honest, I thought Mozilla’s SeaMonkey was a dead project, long since eclipsed by the one-two punch of Firefox and Thunderbird. Turns out it’s been very quietly under wraps for a long time now, and has finally reached a 2.0 release (PortableApps version).

• Open-source software has been on the rise at many businesses during the extended economic downturn, and one of the areas where it is starting to offer companies a lot of flexibility and cost savings is in cloud computing. Cloud deployments can save money, free businesses from vendor lock-ins that could really sting over time, and offer flexible ways to combine public and private applications. The following are 11 top open-source cloud applications, services, educational resources, support options, general items of interest, and more.

• WarMouse, in collaboration with the OpenOffice.org community, revealed on Friday a new open-source mouse developed specifically for users of the OpenOffice suite.

• And that was it. I missed being involved in the project, but I wasn’t concerned about its future; I had handed over the keys to others, and built up an active community of user-developers.

• They say the final responsibility of an open source software maintainer is to hand off the project to someone else. It’s a hard step, that final transition. But it’s important for the project to survive on its own. And more importantly, it’s possible.

• The answer, of course, is that free and open-source software is doing just fine, and that venture capital and IPOs were never what FOSS was about to begin with. But its impact on global technology has nonetheless been profound — not only in the server software arena, but in other important markets and niches as well. Its impact is felt in the burgeoning world of mobile devices of all kinds, embedded systems everywhere and much more.

• Mistry is the creator of SixthSense, a wearable gesture interface that uses a camera and tiny projector to display data and information onto surfaces, walls, and even your hand. Special fingertip sensors let users manipulate the data and use their hands to interact with it. During a presentation at the TEDIndia conference this week, the PhD student announced plans to release SixthSense under an open source license in the coming months.

• In other words LyX in a fairly easy to use graphical interface for Tex/LaTex documents.

• One of the things that makes people go gaga over LyX and Tex and Latex is that it works great for mathematical formulas. This is a problem for me because I hardly ever need to work with mathematical formulas. But, any manual, any on line information, etc. about LyX, TeX, or LaTex is about one third or more about mathematical formulas.

• Why would you NOT use a WYSIWYG word processor for a document that has several sections, several graphics and tables, and is a hundred pages long or so with a table of contents and references?

• Recently posted on the FFmpeg Developers mailing list was a request for comment from Ronald Bultje regarding the intention to form an FFmpeg Foundation (although not using that name).

Blurring

• As you can imagine, I’m not excited to see more open core software. Groundwork has raised nearly US$30 million and continues to fail with its open core fork of Nagios, and while I consider Ethan much more capable I think it is a bad move. The popularity of Nagios was driven by its community, and it seems obvious that this community is not happy. Driving another wedge between them by splitting development into open and closed versions will not help.

• Strategic decisions about what to keep secret and what to make open should come out of a deep analysis of which are your value propositions and core competencies, and changing direction is always an option. I would consider the opportunity to not remove old open source links though, maybe updating those pages and explaining the change of strategy.

• And yes this app is Open Source/Free Software, released under GPL.

Mozilla

• At one point, Mozilla considered building a plug-in that would turn Microsoft’s Internet Explorer into a decent browser. But unlike Google, it quickly abandoned the idea.

• Mozilla Corp.’s director of community developer Asa Dotzler tells The Reg that during its Firefox Summit two summers ago, developers discussed a plug-in similar to Google’s Chrome Frame.

• Drumbeat will have tools for interested people to try ideas out — much as Spread Firefox, our product extension framework, and the Mozilla Labs efforts provides ways for interested people to try out ideas closely related to our products.

• We’ve come a long way on this front: we’re getting better at telling the world a simpler, more unified story about Mozilla. All around I hear people talking confidently about ‘Mozilla’ — the project and the community with a mission to create a better internet. And I see fewer public references to all the different pieces that make up Mozilla. This is important.

Business

• This morning we announced the acquisition of Zapatec. I believe Dana at ZDNET summarized it best: “With Zapatec Funambol has one stack to rule mobile open source”. I believe this is a big part of the reason why we made the move. However, there is more and I thought it would be nice for me to answer some of the questions you might have here.

• If there’s any upside to the lousy economy, it’s that it has pushed a lot of people to realize their dreams of starting small businesses or going into business for themselves. Thanks to open source projects like Tryton, small businesses have the tools to run with the big dogs. Tryton is a general application platform that is split into three parts: A client, server, and modules that provide functionality like accounting, invoicing, sale and purchase management, inventory management, and so on. The default set of modules provides much of the functionality any small (or large) business needs to track its money, inventory, and employee’s time.

• Open source content management software vendor eZ Systems put former IBM executive Christoph Rau at the helm today as the company’s new CEO. He’s replacing co-founder Aleksander Farstad, who will become chief business development officer.

FSF/GNU

• This month Philip Charles created a new installation CD, the L series, for the Hurd, which brings us a big step towards installing the Hurd from the Hurd (without the need of a Linux-based installer). If you enjoy testing stuff, please give it a try.

Licensing

• Versant Corporation (Nasdaq:VSNT), an industry leader in specialized data management software, announces that the open source license used for the db4o product offering is being upgraded to the GPLv3 license. Upgrade to the GPLv3 license assures compatibility with other open source products, thereby widening db4o’s potential scope for adoption.

Openness

• I recently had the privilege of interviewing Michael Hart, former editor and founder of Project Gutenberg. In our interview, Michael discusses the future of PG, and looks back on how it has evolved through changing times.

• This page describes how to search for items of legislation held within Legislation API.

• The Ministry’s Cultural Education program is the first of its kind in Poland to encourage grant recipients to freely and publicly share educational content. The program, with a budget of 11,5 million Polish zloty (about 4 million Euro), will fund educational projects that promote creativity and self-expression, as well as provide children and youth with extra-curricular artistic education.

• The Ott Planetarium (see also our previous posts) have released their latest production, ‘Sizing up Space’ as an open movie – including all source files. In addition, they have planned a new workshop.

• A while back, my sister asked me for some information on the self-publishing options I’ve been investigating. My response went into more detail than I expected, and seemed beneficial to more people than her, so I finally took some time to edit it for my blog.

Standards/Consortia

• The Dutch government has launched a web service called Officeshots.org which enables users to compare the output quality of various office suites as far as interoperability is concerned.

• Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British physicist who first designed the way web servers deliver pages to web browsers nearly 19 years ago, sees great promise in HTML5, the much-anticipated rewrite of the language used to build web pages.

• “I think (HTML5) is great,” he said at the Worldwide Web Consortium’s (W3C) annual member gathering, taking place here this week.

Leftovers

• ECUADOR’s unprecedented offer to accept payment for not extracting oil from beneath the Amazon rainforest is beginning to draw interest. The move could usher in a new way to both combat climate change and prevent damage to ecologically diverse and sensitive regions.

• IF YOU want to do something well, do it yourself. Newly industrialised countries of the “south” are developing cheap treatments for neglected tropical diseases, filling the void left by western drug firms, which focus on diseases of the rich.

• The world’s poorest people suffer from tropical diseases such as rabies, hookworm and river blindness. Yet few treatments have been developed by big pharma: of 1556 drugs approved between 1975 and 2004, only 21 were for such diseases.

• When I came to write ‘Whose Side Are They On?’ I had no idea just what a passionate and powerful grip it would have on me. I’ve never been political, not in the party sense, and my interests have always been in foreign affairs and history.

• Then one day I picked up a newspaper and read that the government was creating around 320 new laws a year, according to the Liberal Democrats, and more than half of those had never been debated in Parliament. I wanted to know why and particularly why they thought it necessary.

• That’s interesting enough, but what really caught my attention was the “leaderboard” down the left-hand side of the petition page. This rates the performance of the CEOs of major computer companies in terms of what they are doing on green issues. IBM’s Sam Palmisano is in first place with 43 marks out of 100; Google’s Eric Schmidt is in fourth place with 32/100. Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has a rather dismal 23/100, but even that’s much better than the laggards like Sony (10/100) and Panasonic (8/100).

Finance

• This week I had an opportunity most Americans would relish, just as I did. I was able to unload on two top executives of Goldman Sachs who descended from on high to my office because I clearly needed some educating. One was a Vice President and the other their Chief Risk Officer.

• [...]

• The letter was signed “Sincerely” and I let them know just how sincerely I felt about it.

• Amazingly, these visitors from another planet told me with very straight faces that I must realize that the $21 billion in bonuses were “accrued” bonuses. “Aaaaah,” I nodded. “That will make all the difference in the world to my constituents who are losing their homes as well as their jobs.” That’s when I asked them exactly which planet they were in fact from.

• “Forgive me for saying this,” I said disingenuously, “but neither of you, as smart as you surely are, is worth 4,000 of my constituents,” referring to the difference in the average salary of top executives in the financial sector and the average working person.

• Ben Bernanke is a stooge for the powerful few ~ which is the definition of an Oligarchy ( the tyranny of the Elites ). Wall Street owes the survival of it’s recent near death experience to Bernanke who poured trillions of dollars into its rotting black hole of toxic debt to keep it afloat ~ in order to maintain a certain way of life for the financial elite of the Oligarchy.

• In a discussion of the Fed and bank bailouts on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting in late July, host Dylan Ratigan described the process by which the Federal Reserve exchanged $13.9 trillion of bad bank debt ( TRASH ) for cash which it then gave to the struggling banks ~ and he used a simple game to illustrate this Ponzi scheme. Eliot Spitzer, who built a reputation as “the Sheriff of Wall Street” as New York’s attorney-general and former Governor agreed with Ratigan that the bank bailout amounts to “America’s greatest theft and cover-up ever.”

• Here is Greg Gordon’s, McClatchy News, detailed article on how Goldman Sach’s scammed the system by selling toxic mortgages that they knew were not being reviewed ~ and then secretly bet the other way with high flying derivatives.

• JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to a settlement worth more than $700 million over federal regulators’ charges that it made unlawful payments to friends of public officials to win municipal bond business in Jefferson County, Ala.

• The scandal over the county’s $3.9 billion debt has pushed it to the brink of filing what would be the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday announced the settlement with JPMorgan, which canceled interest-rate swap contracts with the county worth $700 million in March.

• J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. on Wednesday settled charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission for two former managing directors’ alleged roles in an unlawful payment scheme that enabled them to win business involving municipal-bond offerings and swap-agreement transactions with Jefferson County, Ala.

• It should come as no surprise that those at the top of the food chain get preferential treatment on all levels. But this still stinks to high heaven. Employees of the Goldman, the Fed, Citigroup, and other banks are getting H1N1 vaccine allotments out of proportion to what can be justified from a public health standpoint. In particular, Goldman has gotten more than Lenox HIll hospital, which needs it not just for the sick but more important, for workers (not only does the public need to keep front-line health care workers in as good shape as possible, but if they get the infection, they become disease vectors fast, given the number of people they see).

AstroTurf

• Nuclear energy, a prime source of electricity for Pennsylvania, is finally getting the respect it deserves.

• It’s not hard to see why: America’s power needs continue to grow, and meeting them without harming the environment calls for every available nonpolluting energy source. Nuclear energy is the most dependable and cost-effective such option.

• [...]

• Because nuclear energy is virtually emissions-free, America’s 104 nuclear reactors already account for nearly 75 percent of the country’s clean energy, and 93 percent of Pennsylvania’s.

Internet/Censorship/Web Abuse/Rights

• Back in September, we wrote about Glenn Beck’s misguided attempt to gain control over the domain name used as part of an internet meme that is critical of Glenn Beck, GlennBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlIn1990.com (it’s a dead site now, keep reading). If you’re unfamiliar with the meme, it’s mocking a favorite tactic of various cable news talk show hosts, to “ask questions” that are accusatory in nature, whether or not there’s any substance to back them up. Glenn Beck didn’t accuse the site of defamation or anything, but filed a domain name complaint, saying that it violated his trademark.

• Google describes Dashboard as a simple way to view “the data associated with your account”, and that it will provide users “greater transparency and control over their own data.” Elsewhere, Dashboard has been described as a “big concession to users’ privacy rights“, as the answer to the question: “What does Google know about me?”, and as a place providing users “more control over the personal information stored in Google’s databases“.

• A sweeping telecom reform package finally cleared the European Parliament, but members abandoned a bid to declare Internet access a fundamental right

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• Rather than requiring that a judge alone be the authority to order a severing of the internet connection, the compromise text reads that only a “prior fair and impartial procedure” is necessary, a phrasing that is sufficiently ambiguous that has allowed both sides to claim a win.

• Leading British newspapers further evoked the sensational terror of the incidents through the captioning of horrific images of destruction. It contextualised them within the realm of fascination and fear with headlines such as “London’s Day of Terror” from the Guardian, “Terror Comes to London” from the Independent and “Al-Qa’eda Brings Terror to the Heart of London” from the Daily Telegraph (“What the Papers Say”). Roland Barthes notes that “even from the perspective of a purely immanent analysis, the structure of the photograph is not an isolated structure; it is in communication with at least one other structure, namely the text – title, caption or article – accompanying every press photograph” (16). He suggested that, with the rise to prominence of ‘the press photograph’ as a mode of visual communication, the traditional relationship between image and text was inverted: “it is not the image which comes to elucidate or ‘realize’ the text, but the latter which comes to sublimate, patheticize or rationalize the image” (25).

Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

• The General Secretariat has weighed my “interest in being informed of progress in this area against the general interest that progress be made in an area that is still the subject of negotiations”… “As there is no evidence suggesting an overriding public interest to warrant disclosure of the document in question, the General Secretariat has concluded that protection of the decision-making process outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

• If even the head of WIPO is saying ACTA needs to be drawn up as part of an open, transparent process, isn’t it time for the relevant governments to listen?

• As this shows, it collects all the worst ideas around copyright infringement – third-party liability, limited safe harbour rules, “three strikes and you’re out”, anti-circumvention legislation etc. – and wants to make them mandatory in most of the developed world.

• But step back a minute, and notice what I’ve just written: the worst ideas around *copyright infringement*. And yet time and again ACTA governments around the world have insisted that this is not a copyright treaty, but a treaty to fight counterfeiting by large-scale, organised crime – it’s even in ACTA’s name.

• Under the worldwide rules of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Internet service providers such as Bell and Rogers in Canada would be required to become copyright police and filter out pirated material from their networks, hand over the identities of customers believed to be infringing copyrights and restrict the use of identity-blocking software.

• A leaked chapter of the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) could “eliminate sovereign choice on domestic copyright policy”, Canadian internet law specialist Michael Geist says.

• Computerworld reported the leak and apparent contradictions between the new text and statements last year from New Zealand MED negotiator George Wardle. Last year, Wardle told Computerworld the treaty was aimed at piracy on a commercial scale.

• The problem is the White House has no right to say that you can’t manipulate the photo, since the photo is public domain. It’s really unfortunate that, once again, we’re seeing how little people seem to understand (or value) the public domain.

• The court ruled that Telenor is not contributing to any infringements of copyright law when its subscribers use The Pirate Bay, and therefore there is no legal basis for forcing the ISP to block access to the site…. In making its decision, the court also had to examine the repercussions if it ruled that Telenor and other ISPs had to block access to certain websites. This, it said, is usually the responsibility of the authorities and handing this task to private companies would be “unnatural.”

• Rather, he was owning up to having broken DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control technology, which is against the law, there, says BusinessDK, noting the ministry of culture had intended to update local laws regarding “copy protection” to enable people to make copies for personal use.

• Then, on being questioned she appeared to support Hollywood’s position that any net neutrality laws won’t apply to mandating content filters on ISPs. It’s looking like — just as was initially feared — this position is really to get Hollywood’s own representative in the White House. What a shame. If you must have an “IP Czar” shouldn’t it be someone who’s actually focused on making sure progress is being promoted, rather than someone who wants to blindly crack down on infringement with no thought towards whether or not it makes sense?

• Thanks to the internet and various “wars” on consumers, copyright isn’t just an arcane subject that the day to day person doesn’t know much about. A serious attempt at remaking copyright laws might actually draw out well-reasoned and well-argued points that go against the current views held by the record labels and movie studios. See what’s been happening in Canada, for example.

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