● 11.14.09

● Links 14/11/2009: Linux 2.6.32 at Seventh RC, Fedora 12 Release Imminent

Posted in News Roundup at 5:58 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is a must-have in server environments, and for many desktop users as well. But although simply connecting your PC or server to a UPS will protect you from intermittent power outages and give you the chance to shut the system down at the keyboard, an unattended power outage could still cause problems. For added protection, you can run a power-monitoring utility that will read status information from the UPS and perform a clean shutdown of the connected machine (or machines), preserving data and stopping processes in the proper state.

• We know that it will be Linux-based and that the primary interface will likely be the Chrome browser.

• I want to both address an area that can be profoundly affected by Linux/FOSS and give a plug at the same time.

• There is a market area that can accommodate for the most part, three groups. Small business, Schools and non-profit organizations. Small business counts for up to 70% of all businesses in the U.S.

• Though the challenges which where were earlier faced by the LINUX desktops remain largely unsolved , buisness adoption of linux desktops is on rise. May be it is not because of their commitment to the OPEN SOURCE world but more possibly motivated by the low cost budget.

Visuals

• This is a collection of Top 10 Conky designs in a random order, that I really like. Something a bit different from the basic setup.

Desktop

• On Nov. 5th, 2009, during the first OLE Assembly in Kathmandu, I visited a class that uses the XO laptop in the Binayak Bal School of Badal Gaun, Nepal (several pictures available at the bottom of this page).

• Idea Cellular provides the lowest tariff for mobile internet access through its Net Setter devices. And it promises of plug-n-play zero-cd installation of the devices.

• So if you are a dual booting Linux enthusiast I can recommend giving Virtualbox a try. You never know, you may decide to give up that Windows partition after all and leave more room for your favorite Linux OS and your data.

Google

• Google will offer downloads of its Chrome operating system any day now, according to an internet rumor.

Server

• While I left the sales job to the chaps at Canonical, the commercial arm of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, I would say that the decision by Ubuntu to mirror AWS for the enterprise using the Eucaluptus architecture, based on Amazon’s AWS APIs, makes a great deal of sense.

Kernel Space

• A research group in the computer sciences faculty at North Carolina State University has written a prototype to prevent rootkits from manipulating kernel object hooks to do their damage.

• Earlier this month, Linus Torvalds released 2.6.32-rc6 – due to the Kernel Summit, RC6 was not released the usual week after RC5, but two weeks after. As usual at this point in the development cycle, mostly minor patches have been merged over the past few days to avoid making changes that might introduce new bugs in the three to six weeks that remain until the final release of Linux 2.6.32.

• While there is already work building up for the Linux 2.6.33 kernel like the just talked about KMS page-flipping ioctl, we are still in the middle of the Linux 2.6.32 development cycle. Linus Torvalds has just issued the 2.6.32-rc7 release after it was delayed by another serious — but now fixed — regression (this time in the resume support).

• While many of the distributions arriving this autumn and winter are shipping with an X Server 1.6 build rather than the new X Server 1.7, if you are using Fedora 12 or another distribution shipping with the latest X.Org 7.5 packages, there is good news if you are a customer of NVIDIA’s older graphics hardware.

• It was almost one year ago that VMware acquired Tungsten Graphics, but now their motives behind that acquisition are becoming more clear. Being hosted at VMware’s headquarters today in Palo Alto, California was a Gallium3D Workshop, where various open-source Mesa developers are currently at and others connecting remotely.

Applications

• What’s new in this release (see below for details): – Gecko now installed at wineprefix creation time. – Better support for certificates in crypt32. – Improved sound support in mciwave. – Some more Direct3D 10 functions. – Many cleanups for issues spotted by Valgrind. – Various bug fixes.

• This news is coming a few days late (MPlayer’s web-site lacks any RSS or syndication support), but the latest MPlayer code in their SVN trunk now supports most HD-DVD and Blu-ray codecs. Earlier this year we talked about possible Blu-ray support for FFmpeg and developers becoming more interested after we interviewed the FFmpeg developers and there ended up being an outpouring of support by our readers offering up Blu-ray drives and other forms of help.

• What we were in the process of writing about when we discovered MPlayer’s support for most Blu-ray and HD-DVD codecs was that there is now support for MPEG-4 ASP decoding with VDPAU (NVIDIA’s Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix) in the mainline FFmpeg tree.

• For the longest time I refused to see the value in Twitter. Over the last six months I have changed my tune on that. Now I use Twitter primarily as a PR tool for my articles. And since my renewed belief in micro-blogging, I have found plenty of tools with which to enact with Twitter.

• Gwibber is an open source microblogging client for GNOME that supports Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook, Pownce, Identi.ca and other popular social web services.

• At first glance, Tellico seemed like the obvious winner of the bunch. It’s got built-in templates, it’s configurable and provides good documentation. The design is elegant, if not pretty, but it’s been superseded by a superior program, one that’s pushed the heights of what a collection manager can be.

• The multi talented UltraEdit is now available as UEX in a commercial version for Linux. The editor is extremely popular, especially in the world of Windows.

Games

• If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you grew up with classic video game consoles like the NES and Sega Genesis. For years Windows users have been enjoying high quality game emulation software, but many of the Linux options have been buggy or incomplete. It’s time to take a look at where things stand when it comes to playing console games in Linux. Here at MakeTechEasier, we’ve touched on console game emulation here and there, but never done a guide covering multiple systems. Today, we’ll show you how to run games for NES, SNES, Genesis, original Playstation, and Dreamcast.

• There’s something to be said for having a diverse product portfolio. As we heard earlier in the year, North London distributor Interactive Ideas has been doing very nicely on the back of its strong Linux for enterprise offering. But at this time of year, its peripherals business comes to the fore.

• Ryan “icculus” Gordon updated his .plan file this week with an update on the Aquaria port:

KDE

• I just wanted to post a quick thank you to everybody who congratulated me on the German Medal of Merit, I truly appreciated it.

• To get the facts straight: the Medal of Merit is the lowest class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, unofficially but commonly described as Federal Cross of Merit. The medal does indeed feature a big cross, so the familiar name fits well. In order to get the next class – the Cross of Merit – you will typically have to be at least 40 years old, so this is a good as it gets and it does feel very satisfying indeed.

• For KDE 4.4, we’re giving a bit of touchscreen friendliness around Plasma, a thing common on touchscreen based uis is the so called flick lists and scroll views. They can be web browsers, simle item views, image explorers and so on.

• At work we have a new machine with Windows 7 on it. While setting it up for a new employee, it was my first chance to play with Windows 7. My impression is that its pretty much the same Windows as always, with a shiney new graphical interface. If you liked Windows before, its not all that different. In some places (Control Panel), options are gone for setting up new users and the like; but in many other places just below the surface, its all the same as before, such as adding a new printer.

• If you are using KDE and not Gnome, Kopete is the better choice than Pidgin. It uses less memory under the KDE desktop environment. If you want a native KDE app that can handle multiple messenger connections, this is a great program. My only problem with this program is that it currently don’t support microphone and audio/video conferences.

Distributions

• Check out the waiting list below, you never know, you may find a hidden little gem of a distro that hasn’t got the backing of the likes of Canonical or Novell, so remains unknown. (Take into account that the list goes back to 2004 and some projects have been discontinued)

Red Hat Family

• Virtualization has been a big push this year for Linux vendor Red Hat (NYSE: RHT). It’s also a big area of focus for the Red Hat-sponsored Fedora Linux 12 release, which is due out next week.

• The Fedora Linux distribution has been including virtualization technologies beginning with the Fedora Core 5 release in 2006 and has been steadily adding new virtualization features ever since. In Fedora 12, the open source Linux community project is adding new technology to improve virtualization memory management and performance.

• Fedora 12 is not out yet, no. However, thanks in a big part to Luya being on the ball and getting started on the media artwork, and with his help, we have put together a full set of Fedora 12 media artwork. So now you can have a head start at getting your media all prepared and ready to burn next Tuesday!

• We’ve [1] been working on a set of one-page release notes for Fedora 12, and now that those are set I took some time today to put them into a single PDF file. However, there are 3 pages…! So, for your event, you might like to print out two sets of release notes: Page 1 + Page 2 for desktop users, and Page 1 + Page 3 for system administrators and developers.

• I’ve heard that when the RedHat developers present new open-source packages to their local Linux User-Group, before the meeting is over one of the Foresight people will have downloaded the source, created a Foresight package, uploaded it to the repository for folks to get, and it will be available for anyone to use.

Mandriva

• The good thing about Mandriva is that it’s a distro for both the newbies and the Geeks. I will be using it from now and will surely post my experiences here. I hope that it continues to impress me. Watch out.

• One week ago, Mandriva Cooker, which will lead to version 2010 Spring in about 6 months was opened again. In 8 days, this has resulted in almost 1100 package updates.

• The Edge: Mandriva One obviously packs more useful software than Ubuntu, but why the absence of games? Any application not part of the default installation is likely available in the repositories. In terms of default installed applications, I’m yet to review a distro that tops Sabayon.

Debian Family

• Kubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala is very, very nice. It’s a pleasant surprise. And it’s better than Ubuntu.

• Still, no operating system is ever flawless. This latest Ubuntu release fixes some lingering problems and builds in several useful enhancements. Its eye candy is tasty. Its performance is like a sugar rush!

• Ubuntu users with netbooks received a double benefit with the final release from Canonical. The Remix version not only contains the Karmic code upgrade, but it also has a revamped interface that better displays applications on 8-inch to 10-inch LCD screens.

Mint

• The Linux Mint team announced the release of Linux Mint 8 Helena RC1. The 8th release of Linux Mint comes with numerous bug fixes and a lot of improvements.

• Former Blue Peter presenter Valerie Singleton has launched a new ‘simple’ computer designed for the elderly.

• A new computer has debuted in the UK called SimplicITy that is aimed directly at the elderly. The computer forgoes the complexities of the full windows operating system and uses Linux. Rather than offering users direct access to the normal Linux start up screen the machine goes directly to a screen called “square one.”

• Firstly: yes, the computers run Linux Mint and Eldy, but it is *not* the version of Eldy that is available for download from Vegan Solutions in Vicenza. We have been working with Enrico Neri and his team at Vegan Soln’s for about six months now, building a special custom version of Eldy for our customers.

• Eldy has some 180,000 users already in Italy, and it is an Italian product. They have produced versions for international users, but it must be admitted, their English translations do leave something to be desired in places. We are working on that with them, but our first priority was to get our own product on the market.

Devices/Embedded

• The selected MP3 players on the list not only support Linux natively, without the use of any extra programs, but in many cases also offer better sound quality, better battery life, and better file format support then an iPod.

• The newly released Chumby One arrived in the mail today, and we couldn’t wait to see how it compared to the original digital connected companion device. The Chumby, in case you haven’t heard of it, is a multi-function gadget that can serve as an alarm clock, RSS reader, gaming device, or music player. It connects to the internet with Wi-Fi, and runs user-created widgets to do cool things like read your Gmail or send you Twitter updates. You interact with it through a 3.5 inch resistive touchscreen, but it also has an accelerometer inside, since it’s made to be held and encourages user interaction.

• Avalue announced two Linux-compatible, ARM-architecture computer-on-module (COMs). The RSC-W910 is based on a Nuvoton W90P910 ARM9 CPU, and the RSM-MX515 SoM is based on a Freescale Cortex-A8-based i.MX515 system-on-chip (SoC), says the company.

Dell

• Dell announced a miniature PC using single- or dual-core AMD processors that is available with Ubuntu Linux. Starting at approximately $230, the Inspiron Zino HD sports up to 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk drive, comes in ten different colors, and is available with discrete graphics, the company says.

• The box maker has inked deals with China Mobile and Claro to bring its Android based Dell Mini 3 Smart Phone to market.

• Dell’s Mini 3i Android-based smartphone. Vergrößern Following previous reports that Dell’s Mini 3i smartphone was merely a proof of concept, the computer giant has now confirmed that it’s planning on releasing the device. Dell says that it’s Android-based phone will feature a 3.5 inch capacitive touch screen display and that it will be launching this year in Brazil and China. Additional specifications have yet to be released, but, according to reports, the mobile will be available in 2G and 3G models.

• Dell has, so far, only said that its smartphone will be launched into China this month through carrier China Mobile. Brazil will be second on the list in December, Dell added.

Phones

• Our commitment to the Open Handset Alliance stems from a vision of the Google Android OS as an environment that enables developers to create rich user experiences with some of latest technologies available on the Internet. The Xperia X10 is the first of a family of products, some of which will use this technology.

• Similar to the jailbreak community hacking the iPhone, there’s a group of Android developers determined to grant any Google-powered phone free access to every feature imaginable. And they’re able to accomplish this task more legitimately than underground iPhone hackers, since Android’s source code is completely open to developers.

• The open-source Android operating system did not have any market share in Q3 2008, as it had only recently been introduced. In Q3 2009, however, it had a market share of 3.9 percent of the smartphone market. Palm’s WebOS had 1.1 percent, and other Linux-based mobile operating systems had 4.7 percent.

• It’s also developing a new Linux-based operating system called Maemo that could vault it into the smart phone market in the U.S.

• For almost 3 years, Apple’s iPhone has set the standard for mainstream smart phones. Recently, Apple has taken over a large portion of the smart phone market, now manufacturers like Nokia are taking the iPhone threat seriously and bringing out new phones to try to compete. One phone that looks like it has a real chance to compete with the iPhone is Nokia’s new N900 phone/internet tablet. Here are 15 ways we think that the N900 is better than the iPhone, and a few reasons why the iPhone is still better.

Sub-notebooks

• Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs showed off first Snapdragon chips powered Smartbook at an analyst meet held in New York. This Smartbook, a mini-laptop, will be Lenovo branded and will arrive in U.S. though AT&T. Lenovo Smartbook will have HD capable display and a longer battery life.

• The folks at JoliCloud are hard at work developing an operating system designed specifically for netbooks. It’s designed to integrate closely with web-based applications like Gmail and Google Docs as well as social software such as Twitter and Facebook. The OS is based on Linux, and this week the Jolicloud team updated its netbook compatibility list to include a number of additional models including the Acer Aspire One D150, the LG X110 and X120, Samsung NC10, Toshiba NB200, Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2, and HP Mini 110 and Mini 5101. For a complete list, visit the Jolicloud netbook compatibility page.

• At Qualcomm’s annual analyst meeting today, the company demonstrated a Linux- and Qualcomm Snapdragon-based “smartbook” from Lenovo, say reports. Qualcomm also announced a new 1GHz MSM7x30 smartphone chipset family which incorporates the same superscalar Scorpion CPU technology as the Snapdragon, and is capable of 720p video at 30fps, says Qualcomm.

• Lenovo might not describe their return to the Linux desktop like that, but that’s what they’re doing. Yesterday, November 12th, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs gave the world a sneak peak at the Lenovo ARM Snapdragon-powered smartbook, a cross between a smartphone and a netbook. Jacobs added that Lenovo Linux-based smartbook would make its debut at January’s CES (Computer Electronics Show).

Free Software/Open Source

• Now Open Source is entirely the opposite way. It very truly follows the BK mentality of “Have it your way.” You can share it, customize it, tweak, hack, and crack it, you can look at the source code (aka accountability) and so much more. The only restrictions that a FOSS project might have are either technical (some technical limitation prevents you from doing something you want to) or legal (IE, the law prevents you from doing certain things). Otherwise, you’re free to do whatever, however, whenever, etc, etc, you want.

• Now when using this analogy, most people won’t understand the technical or legal limitations that may exist naturally in the software (IE, the language it’s written in may not support doing what you want, or what you’re asking for is nearly impossible to code) unless they’re complete tech heads. So I recommend keeping the comparisons to the bare minimum. Find something they like to do, or want to do, and use that as your base when using this analogy in the promotion of FOSS.

• An experiment in Nicaragua shows just how powerful Open Source software can be in leveling the playing field. The second poorest country of the Americas now has one of the best software solutions for displaying agricultural data in the western hemisphere.

• A leading Free and Open Source Software event, the GNOME Asia Summit, will be held in HCM City’s Quang Trung Software Park from November 20-22.

• More than 700 participants from 10 countries, including China, Cambodia, India, Singapore, Australia, Germany, France, the UK and the US, will take part.

• Listen up open source developers, if you want your project to succeed you’re going to have to do more than write great code; you’re going to have to document it, teach new users how it works and provide real-world examples of what you can do with it.

MySQL/Sun

• Some of this thinking arose from talk about some of the gloomier prospects for MySQL, speculation which goes as far back as Sun’s purchase of the company. What good is the software without the team of people who built it? It’s difficult to replace the synergy you get from such people (and I hate that word, but it’s really the only one that fits) with folks who have been largely on the outside looking in.

• Is MySQL free in a free-market? With the European Commission’s ongoing investigation, a debate over what makes free software free has emerged, ironically, centred on how money is made from free software.

• A few years ago Sun Microsystems paid $1 billion for open-source database maker MySQL. At the time, Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz justified spending that kind of money on the profitless venture for the exposure it would give him to millions of potential customers and software developers around the world. They were the kind of people Sun needed to reach in order to sell Sun’s computer servers, he said, and the authenticity Sun gained from being so heavily in open source was important in winning their loyalty. “We are all media companies now,” he said.

Mozilla

• Mozilla, creators of the web browser Firefox and the Thunderbird, have recently announced a new contest for application developers. As some of you may already know, Mozilla Firefox is a free open source software that made its name and reputation for being one of the most stable and easily customized browsers available.

• [...]

• A new contest by Mozilla will have developers’ skills in creating add-ons for mobile put to the test. All submitted Mozilla Firefox add-on for mobile will be eligible for the contest as long as it is submitted before December 7, 2009. At stake are 10 Nokia N900 mobile phones, one will be given to each of the developers of the “top ten mobile add-ons that best represent user experience and innovation”.

• If you install only one extension, make sure it’s NoScript. By default, it blocks all scripts — a good thing. That’s because bad guys love to use scripts to install malware. This way, you decide whether JavaScript, Java, and other content are allowed to run.

• Mozilla Labs is continuing in its quest to make it as easy to extend the browser as it is to write a Web page. The latest update to Jetpack came out this week, and brought a few new APIs and a gallery of community contributed Jetpacks. There’s been quite a bit of progress, but Jetpack isn’t quite there just yet.

Fog Computing

• Of the two packages, Eucalyptus is farther along in terms of development: NASA uses Eucalyptus for its Nebula cloud. The Energy Department’s Argonne National Laboratory is also exploring Eucalyptus, for scientific research. Deltacloud is still in development, though agencies could participate and help define it features.

• The cloud, software as a service, hosted applications, whatever you want to call it is coming. The concepts are useful, but I have little faith in the implementations.

• A Practical Alternative

• As always in Linux-land, there is a role for the do-it-yourselfer to turn dung into gold. Come back next week and I will tell about this.

Audiocasts

• This week on the show: KDE founder gets German medal of honour, Harald Welte says Android is crap, Open Office releases the worst computer mouse in history, Dan reviews Mandriva 2010 and much more…

• A short one this time – I upgraded to Karmic Koala and did a clean install with new partitions and EXT4 file system. And now I am getting the important stuff back on the disk and leave the cruft out. This meant that a lot of the files needed for a proper podcast are still on the external disks.

• The Open Rights Group, an organization dedicated to protecting the rights of people in the digital age.

• Topics for this podcast:

• *Cavium-MontaVista continues embedded Linux consolidation *Day Software’s unique open source story *DataSync and an update on open source for SMBs *Our Cost Conscious survey and coming report

CMS

• The legendary singer, guitarist, songwriter and composer Eric Clapton is using Drupal for his website http://www.ericclapton.com.

• This week Packt (news, site) is announcing one new award winner a day. Already they’ve revealed that:

• * Plone (news, site) won 2009 Best Other Open Source CMS * Drupal (news, site) won Best Open Source PHP CMS * ImpressCMS (news, site) won 2009 Most Promising Open Source CMS

• The WordPress project receives US$ 4,000 in prize money, while MODx and SilverStripe each receive US$ 2,500. In addition to the money, WordPress also becomes eligible for the Hall of Fame category next year.

Programming

• The Python 3 language syntax has been frozen until June 2011 under a moratorium imposed by Guido Van Rossum, Python’s creator and BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life). The moratorium, proposed at the end of October, is now defined in PEP3003 and sets out what is not to change in future Python 3 versions.

• It has been a long time since I did any programming. My life took a different path. This book has reminded me of how fun it is to write and read code in Python and made me wonder how I might find or create opportunities to return programming to my busy life (but this time around, if I make the time to write anything, it will be in Python 3.x). This book is why.

• Following six weeks of development, the Perl.org web site, home of the Perl programming language, has now been redesigned and relaunched. According to a journal post by Senior Perl developer Leo Lapworth, the complete redesign and content review is aimed at providing a cleaner and easier to use page for visitors to better find the information they are after.

Standards/Consortia

• Keen to keep growing their marketing share in the ruthless pay TV market against an open source IPTV standard, both companies could do without a partnership of the BBC, Five, ITV (LSE: ITV) and BT (NYSE: BT) marketing an affordable set-top-box against their premium options.

Leftovers

• Google has acquired VoIP startup Gizmo5, intending to roll the company’s engineers into the team that develops the telephony application/controversy magnet known as Google Voice.

Finance

• Two computer programmers who worked for fraudster Bernard Madoff were arrested today on charges of helping to cover up his $65bn (£39bn) swindle.

• The FBI has arrested two programmers in connection with falsifying records at Bernie Madoff’s investment firm.

Internet/Censorship/Web Abuse/Rights

• A law that demands consent to internet cookies has been approved and will be in force across the EU within 18 months. It is so breathtakingly stupid that the normally law-abiding business may be tempted to bend the rules to breaking point.

• How do you annoy the maximum number of Liberal blogs with minimal effort? If you’re Fox News, all you have to do is shut down the YouTube channel that supplies them with infuriating O’Reilly Factor clips. They did this today!

• Spend even a few minutes on a politically-inclined blog that leans to the left, and you’ll spot the little red-and-white “News1News” logo (above) attached to the upper-left corner a YouTube clip, usually of Glenn Beck ranting hilariously or otherwise being horrible. News1News specializes in capturing and uploading Fox bloviator’s most outrageous statements for all of eternity. And each day, we bloggers—from the Huffington Post, Mediaite, Truthdig, Gawker, etc.—plucked newsworthy clips from News1News’ Youtube channel, surrounded them with our words, and put them on our sites. (In fact, Mediaite’s feature “Your Moment of Glenn” is all News1News clips.) From all this blog love, News1News videos had more than 20 million cumulative views by the time it was shut down. It was the simple, convenient way to stoke Liberal ire!

Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

• Hmm. So, on Monday Rupert Murdoch suggests that the courts would reject fair use as a concept, and by Friday two newspaper industry lawyers just happen to have an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal explaining how Google violates copyright law by caching the websites it indexes.

• As I have expressed before on this blog, I am no big fan of patents and copyrights, and monopoly power in general. I am particularly annoyed, on a personal level, by copyrights on music that have been menacing Internet radio for a while now. I have always believed that the fact that artists have a free medium that allows them to be discovered is much better for them than being fed on commercial radio what the big labels deem good for the general public.

• What started out as a sweet little ditty to promote tourism in Lake County, Ind., has turned into a long, bitter copyright battle – one that has piled up thousands of dollars in lawyers’ fees and inundated the courts, leaving one frazzled federal judge to quote rapper DMX: “Y’all gonna make me lose my mind. … Y’all gonna make me lose my cool!”

• Customers of Verizon Communications who pirate music files may soon receive an unwelcome letter from the company.

• The police could retain property they seized after the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute but a private prosecution was being contemplated or taking place.

• The Court of Appeal so stated when allowing the appeal of the defendants, the Chief Constable of Northumbria and the Federation against Copyright Theft, from a decision on a preliminary issue made by Mrs Justice Sharp ([2009] 2 Cr App R 365) at the commencement of civil proceedings in which the claimants, Scopelight Ltd, its directors, Anton Benjamin Vickerman and Kelly-Ann Vickerman, owners of a website called SurfTheChannel.com, sought to recover property including computers, servers, memory sticks and mobile phones, seized by the police pursuant to a warrant in the investigation of contemplated criminal proceedings.

• A PUSH by Australian record companies to make clubs, hotels, restaurants and cafes pay tens of millions of dollars more in fees to play their music has backfired.

• The developers were also asked if Digital Rights Management (DRM) was “an irrelevance, a solution or a problem.” 50% responded that DRM is “an irrelevance,” 30% called it “the solution” and 20% labeled it “the problem.”

• The heavy punishment of illegal file sharers on the web will be counter-productive in the global fight against Internet piracy and copyright infringement, the director-general of a United Nations agency said on Thursday.

• Francis Gurry of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) said music copyright protection was “under the most severe stress” and the problem will likely spread to films as web connections speed up.

• The music industry has been hit by rampant Internet piracy and has so far struggled to persuade consumers to pay for downloaded music.

• Some 40 billion music files were illegally shared on the web in 2008, a piracy rate of 95 percent, WIPO cites industry estimates as showing.

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