● 11.17.09

● Links 17/11/2009: Fedora 12, Ubuntu One Music Store Rumours

Posted in News Roundup at 4:40 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• As far as I am concerned, cloning windows is fine if the hardware you are cloning to is the same as the original windows hardware. If your hardware is different, as is most often the case, then you would be better off to go with a fresh install. With Linux it wasn’t bothered at all with the different hardware.

• So for me it is official. Linux wins the Clone Wars. For windows all I can do is create a motivational poster with a picture of a BSOD and a huge FAIL! caption.

• Once you understand what to expect and how to complete basic tasks, it’s time to get your hands dirty. A good way to start is to grab an old, idle server and download free Linux software from Linux.org, which offers plenty of advice and free operating systems. Otherwise, a search for “Free Linux Software” will provide plenty of hits.

• [...]

• Because Linux is different than Windows, it may initially require more time to set up, as well as enough patience to understand its full potential. If you run a small business and have no Linux experience, you have to weigh the pros and cons. What will it cost to learn Linux or to hire the necessary talent versus how much you can save in licensing costs?

• Open-source thinking. If we think of the phenomenon that is the Linux operating system in purely human terms, we can see that it is about connecting peer-to-peer knowledge and creating networks of expertise. If you can be seen as a leader who knows how to build upon the ideas of others and create superior solutions because you know how to capture the best from a human system (that is, your team), you will be poised to rise above those who are focused solely on their individual contributions.

• Ma3bar is an Arab Support Centre for Free and Open Source Software established by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the University of Balamand, Al-Kurah, Lebanon.

Desktop

• What makes it urgent now is a creeping suspicion I have that Windows malware is unstoppable. I see articles on tech sites several times a week describing new and increasingly clever exploits of flaws in Microsoft and Adobe software. This is troubling on many fronts, from the technical–Why in hell do we still have buffer overflow exploits after all these years?–to the purely political: How do we know that exploits in closed-source software have really been fixed? Linux is not immune to infection (it’s secure at least in part because of its rarity) but the fact is that infections are difficult and rarely seen in the wild. I want to take advantage of that security, whatever its origins.

• Hence the current project.

• Apart from its contrarian (and purely optional) brownness, Karmic’s default GNOME desktop is a great deal like Windows XP. The taskbar functionality is divided between two panels, one at the top and one at the bottom. Now that 20″ displays are common, I use two lines for the Windows taskbar as well and don’t begrudge GNOME the extra line–and you can put both panels at the screen bottom if you want to.

• And, of course, today you can buy PCs with Linux pre-installed on them from vendors like Dell and System76. While I suspect most people still download and install their own Linux distribution, you no longer have to do it.

• Still, though today’s Linux desktops are bigger, faster, and have far more software and hardware support than the Corel desktop, or its 1999 counterparts from Stormix and Caldera, you can see that their family tree is rooted in this first Linux desktop aimed at the mass market.

• I was enjoying football Sunday with a few fellow IT friends over the weekend. Naturally, between plays, the topics tended to veer towards that of IT. I was the lone Linux guy in the crowd, so my opinion was not the norm (I’m used to that, of course). During the course of the day I pieced a few bits of conversation together and was able to finally draw a conclusion to that age old question, “Why don’t more consultants roll out Linux?” The answer should have been obvious to me all along as I long had all of the information I needed. But after hearing what I heard from the collective mouths of an IT group with years of experience and a metro city’s worth of clients, it became all too clear why Windows is always rolled out.

• $$$$$$$$$

• Now understand the people I was with were all self-employed consultants who depend upon their client’s needed support for income. Needed support.

• As the week began, I had the fortune to come across an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal that addressed the problem employees face all-too-often in the workplace: the hardware and software workers are required to use based on their company’s IT policies is often out of date with the technology they can purchase and use at home as consumers.

• This system offers less than 1GB of memory, which is the bare minimum that any full-featured new computer should include. Whether this amount of RAM is optimal for you depends on the PC’s operating system: Windows Vista and Apple’s Mac OS X don’t run well with less than 1GB, Windows XP is fine with 512MB and not too bad with 384MB, and Windows 98 is good with 256MB. Depending on the distribution, Linux can run with as little as 128MB, but most Linux users are better off with at least 512MB–and 1GB is better.

• I was fortunate enough this week to help conduct an interview with Frank Karlitschek who founded KDE-Look.org back in 2001, which has grown to become one of the biggest online communities for Linux. In 2007, Frank also went on to establish Open Desktop.org and its 35 communities and portals for desktop Linux.

Server

• Included is IBM’s Cognos 8 business intelligence system, and System Z, a highly scalable Linux-based virtualisation tool.

HPC

• Today’s release of the list of the top 500 supercomputers shows that well over 90% are running Linux. Also, IBM’s Roadrunner has finally been dethroned; in a big way!

• The latest Top 500 Supercomputer list is now out (see my colleague Andy Patrizio’s story on InternetNews.com), with the top rig doubling its performance to 1.75 petaflops.

• The most popular operating system is Linux, with 90 percent of the Top500.

• The IBM computer is owned by the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and was the first machine to push through the petaflop barrier.

• It is currently able to run at 1.042 petaflops and uses the powerful “cell” chip designed for the PlayStation 3.

PlayStation 3

• Naturally, cracking a child predator’s password requires software that’s more specialized than what’s found on the PlayStation Store. C3 uses Linux on the PlayStation 3 to run its cracking software. Sadly, the newer PS3 Slims do not support the installation of Linux, so the enforcement body is now looking to buy 40 more original PS3s to add to the 20 it already has.

Kernel Space

• LML26415 is PCI card for full resolution (D1) analog video/audio input and output, based on OpenCores PCI controller and MG1264 (Dallas/Mobilygen) motion video processor.

• Continuing in the tradition of providing feature-rich, quarterly updates to the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoronix Media has announced the immediate availability of Phoronix Test Suite 2.2 (codenamed “Bardu”). Phoronix Test Suite 2.2 continues to expand the capabilities and feature set for this open-source testing framework with the introduction of many new features, a new graphical user-interface, numerous new test profiles and suites, and a public beta of the Phoromatic remote test management system.

• Following a meeting last week between Jesse Barnes, Chris Wilson, and Kristian Høgsberg with developers working on the Clutter tool-kit and GNOME’s Mutter window manager, there is a new GLX extension that has been proposed as a result. Jesse Barnes has announced their work on the GLX_INTEL_swap_event extension, which helps GLX integrate better with glib style event loops.

• Last Friday during the Gallium3D workshop we learned that the Tungsten Graphics developers that were bought out by VMware have been working on a virtual Gallium3D driver that would be used by guest operating systems running within VMware’s virtualization platform.

Applications

• Today heathenx published the episode #100 about Inkskape and other graphics software.

• When it comes to organizing and tweaking photos, digiKam and F-Spot rule the roost. But if you don’t need all the bells and whistles of a full-blown photo management tool, then you might want to try Shotwell.

• Every tablet needs a good writing application –something to take notes, make annotations, and maybe even scribble a quick sketch. Xournal is a GTK-based program that does just that. It works with Linux-compatible desktop graphics tablets, tablet PCs, and maemo-based handheld devices (such as the soon-to-be released Nokia N900). Xournal is available in many distribution repositories, or you can download the source code from their website.

• A new update to Google Chrome is available for download, for testers running the browser on all supported platforms, namely Windows, Mac, and Linux. The Mountain View-based search giant released Chrome 4.0.249.0 at the start of this week, offered to early adopters through the company’s Dev channel. The latest development milestone for Chrome comes on the heels of multiple Builds, made available for both testers and the general public in November 2009. Chrome 4.0.249.0 is, of course, up for grabs via the developer channel, but users will also be able to find links to the most recent testing build, as well as additional variants of the open source browser, from Google at the bottom of this article.

Proprietary

• Adobe Labs on Monday released test versions of two closely related foundations for Net-based applications, Flash Player 10.1 and AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) 2.

• National Ergonomics Conference & Exposition (NECE) — Remedy Interactive, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise software solutions that help organizations prevent workplace injuries and reduce injury-related costs, today announced support for Red Hat® Enterprise Linux 4® by releasing a compatible version of its RSIGuard® software.

• Aldec Corporation, a leader in RTL Simulation and Electronic Design Automation (EDA), announces a low-cost Linux RTL Simulator today.

• At Supercomputing 2009, Dauger Research, Inc., announces version 1.8 of Pooch (Parallel OperatiOn and Control Heuristic application) and Pooch Pro clustering software. The patented easy-to-use clustering technology now uses nodes running Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”. The only solution that merges a modern graphical user interface with supercomputer-compatible parallel computing, Pooch debuts support of 64-bit Linux compute nodes alongside Macintosh nodes.

Distributions

• At my last, best count, there were over 550 individual Linux distributions. From the most generic, flat installs of the most common distros to ultra-specialized, multimedia-oriented to the eye-popping, fancy ones–they’re all there for the taking. I found ten distributions from among the 500 or so that I know about to spotlight these for some special feature or set of features that will

New Releases

• The XtreemOS project has released the second public release of its Linux-based Grid operating system under the motto “Making Grid Computing Easier”. The consortium has conceived and integrated a platform of open source technologies to enable easier usage, management, scalabilty and programming on top of Grid computing resources.

• XtreemOS brings new capabilties to Grids, such as easing job submission and monitoring, while providing a comprehensive security implementation and virtual organization management. XtreemOS comes in three flavors: The PC flavor makes it possible to aggregate standalone PCs as computation resources into XtreemOS Grids. The XtreemOS cluster flavor is based on Kerrighed’s LinuxSSI (single system image) technology. LinuxSSI is a Linux cluster providing users an image of a single large system. The third flavor, XtreemOS Mobile has been tailored to run XtreemOS services on mobile devices, such as Nokia Internet Tablets.

• Fedora is a leading edge, free and open source operating system that continues to deliver innovative features to many users, with a new release about every six months. We bring to you the latest and greatest release of Fedora ever, Fedora 12! Join us and share the joy of Free software and the community with friends and family. We have several major new features with special focus on desktops, netbooks, virtualization and system administration.

Mandriva

• Conclusion Normally I like to provide the good and the bad about every operating system I review, however I cannot find anything to complain about in Mandriva 2010. Although I’ve only had a chance to test Kubuntu 9.10 and Mandriva 2010 when it comes to the new wave of Linux distro’s, it’s obvious to me already that this release is nothing short of amazing, and is everything Kubuntu 9.10 should have been. Mandriva has set the standard that other KDE-based distributions should follow yet again.

• Note: In addition, the GNOME version isn’t half bad either, although I haven’t had as much time to spend with it.

• The Good

• * Everything

• The Bad

• * Nothing

• Overall: 5/5 (Fantastic)

• I am a 32-year-old system administrator (”Senior IT Specialist”), who studied to be a Mechanical Engineer, but got into IT while at University. I started my working career at a Linux consulting company (working as a consultant to an ISP, and later on a custom Linux distribution based on Mandrake Linux 9.1 for an OEM). The last 4 years I have been at a Telco, working in their ISP.

Red Hat Family

• Next year’s US Red Hat Summit 2010 will take place in conjunction with JBoss World in Boston, Massachusetts from the 22nd to the 25th of June, 2010. While Red Hat acquired JBoss in April of 2006, the two events have only been linked since 2009. The JBoss World site has yet to be updated to reflect the 2010 event.

• Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced it will host the annual Red Hat Summit and JBoss World event in Boston, June 22-25. Each year Red Hat brings together customers, partners, technologists and open source enthusiasts to explore and discuss solutions to global technology challenges.

• Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced it has been named Large Technology Company of the Year by the North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA) in its 2009 NCTA 21 Awards. The criteria for this award include annual revenue of more than $100 million, market leadership, employment growth, innovation and profit margin. Other finalists in the Large Technology Company category included Epic Games, Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Tekelec.

• ParaScale’s cloud software turns standard Linux platforms (Red Hat Enterprise Linux OS or CentOS) running on commodity servers into a clustered file repository, or storage cloud, with massive capacity and parallel throughput.

• The cluster is composed of controller nodes and storage nodes, each node being a vanilla Linux X86 server with directly-attached storage.

Debian Family

• The preview on the taskbar of running programs is a feature heralded by Microsoft supporters as if its the greatest thing since the microchip. This is available in Gnome and performs in the same way as a Windows counterpart, its not amazing, but it certainly doesn’t take anywhere near the specs that Windows 7 does (IMO) to get it running smoothly. – Just thought Id add that in if you are considering a Linux option rather than a Windows 7 purchase.

• In one of my older articles, I explained how Ubuntu Server has slowly made significant inroads in many enterprise data centers. Ubuntu has been the favorite distribution of many system administrators, architects and various other IT staff. It was these fans of the Linux distribution that brought Ubuntu into their data centers and slowly deployed Ubuntu into ever increasing roles. I have seen Ubuntu Server deployed in roles from simple kiosks and desktops to full blown web server and database farms. Many senior level managers do not even know that key components of their infrastructures are running on Ubuntu Server.

• ONE of the cool things about using Linux is the degree to which you can customize your system. If you want to make it look and act like a Mac, you can. Want the Windows 7 or Vista glassy look? No problem. You can do that, too.

• So in conclusion….would I be able to recommend Ubuntu to other users? Yes I would. It appears that they have built a good distro here. Okay sure there were problems at launch….that is to be expected and yes I will say that I think that they need to do more testing before releasing these distros at times but keep in mind that no release is ever perfect. There will be glitches and problems. You will have to either suck it up and wait for a fix or move to another distro of Linux or go to Windows. The choice is always yours and yours alone. You may have to do some research to get things working properly but remember that there are THOUSANDS of configurations out there and you simply cannot expect Ubuntu to cover them all. Be reasonable.

• For those who don’t know, the Lucid UDS has begun today.

• One of the most interesting yet controversial meetings is this: the Ubuntu One Music Store. What it will be is currently left to the imagination since no specification has apparently have been drafted yet. Selling music online has always been a controversial topic, and that adds interest in such a feature.

• Where will the music come from? A new online music store? Or some existing store? My best guess — and this is purely a guess — is some sort of connection to the Amazon MP3 music store, since Shuttleworth briefly mentioned Amazon during the Ubuntu 9.10 launch phone call with media. Also, Amazon in April 2008 released an MP3 downloader program for Linux, including support for Ubuntu.

• Lucid Lynx is the code name for the upcoming release of Ubuntu, versioned 10.04. This is a significant release for Canonical and Dell as this it will be an LTS (Long Term Support) meaning it will be supported by Canonical for three years on the Desktop and five years on the Servers.

• Granted, all of this, for the time being, remains the largely uncompleted work of a single man. We will have to wait for the next Ubuntu Developer Summit to see whether the proposal is deemed worthy of real attention and integration into Ubuntu servers. But even now, it’s a very interesting idea with the potential to go far.

Devices/Embedded

• Otherwise, there’s been no release date or further announcements, though Arrington claims that there should be big news coming about the Crunchpad shortly.

• The Amazon Kindle, The Sony E-Reader and the iREX iliad all use Linux operating systems.

• I’m sure you knew that.

• The IREX Iliad makes its code fully available to Open Source developers, even if IREX is a little slow off the mark with their SDKs. The other two only release the bits of code that they are duty bound to do so under the GPL.

• Addonics announced a low-cost, six-ounce network-attached storage (NAS) device for the SOHO market. The Linux-based Addonics Mini NAS offers a single 2.5-inch storage bay, an Ethernet port, a USB port, and multiple servers, including UPnP, and supports both SMB and open source Samba network protocols, says the company.

• Hikari’s iFrame (as opposed to the other, Ubuntu-sportin’ iFrame from a while back) is an Android-powered tablet with a skin that’s heavy on the widgets and — in case you’re still intimidated by its difficulty — is also being touted as a photoframe for people who don’t mind ugly photoframes.

Android

• While Android 2.0 has been floating around on Motorola DROIDs for over a week now, one important chunk of it has been under lock-and-key: the source. Even amongst manufacturing partners, we’re told, Google hasn’t been completely open; outside of Motorola (and more recently, HTC), most of the other handset manufacturers have been left out in the cold with nothing to keep them warm but Android v1.6. Until tonight, that is.

• As the sun set over the Silicon Valley last night, Google pushed the source code for Android 2.0 to the Android Open Source Project. Within two hours, the endlessly able Android community had it up and running on the eldest Android of them all, the T-Mobile G1.

• Google has made the source code for the current 2.0 release of Android available to download from its Android Open Source Project page. So far, Android 2.0 has only been released in the US on the Motorola Droid from Verizon. The developer of the CyanogenMod builds of Android, who was recently in the news over a copyright dispute with Google, has already compiled the sources to allow the operating system to run on the first Android phone, T-Mobile’s G1.

• Following its release of Motorola’s Droid and HTC’s Droid Eris, Verizon Wireless will release a third Android phone made by Saygus, say reports. The Saygus VPhone V1 offers a 624MHz Marvell PXA310, a 3.5-inch 800 x 480 pixel touchscreen, a QWERTY keyboard, and proprietary videoconferencing technology, says Saygus.

Phones

• The Nokia N900 has just started shipping and there are already a number of reviews of the device out on the net. I’ve had the opportunity evaluate a pre-release N900 for a few weeks now, and while you can expect a full review in an upcoming issue of Linux Journal, I wanted to give you a quick look into what the N900 is like from the perspective of your average Linux geek. If you’ve read any of my previous articles in Linux Journal, you’ll know that I’m a vim-using, mutt-loving sysadmin who spends a lot of time on the command line, so hopefully I can provide a unique perspective on this device.

• [...]

• If you look at the above list, it’s essentially the same sorts of things I do on my regular laptop. What surprised me the most about the device is just how much it /feels/ like a regular Debian Linux machine, especially on the command line. I mean it uses upstart, pulseaudio, apt-get, GTK and QT libraries, and when I want root I don’t have to use hacked firmware, I just install the gainroot package and type sudo gainroot.

• Nokia has finally released its Maemo5 based smartphone – the N900. Maemo is Nokia’s next generation mobile OS. It is a Linux-based platform that seeks to take on such juggernauts as the iPhone OS and the Android.

• The N900 has intrigued the tech community and people in general with its bevy of features ever since it was first announce. But when you look at it closely enough, it seems like it is too little, too late yet again. Reminds me of the N97 really.

• [...]

• The Nokia N900 Maemo5 phone is now on preorder from the website for $649. Availability is at end of this month (November ’09). Comes only in Black.

• The Nokia N900, with its Linux Maemo operating system at its heart, is a multitasking beast!

Sub-notebooks

• The announcement last week of a Linux-based smartbook from Lenovo was just one of several signs I’m seeing that Linux will maintain a foothold in emerging portable computing categories, including netbooks and smartbooks.

• So rumor has it that Google’s Chrome OS, which had been slated to arrive some time next year, is about to arrive as a beta release. As I pointed out this morning, netbooks based on it may help preserve open source influence on a hot hardware category, but is Chrome OS likely to be a smash hit?

• We recently received a tip from the always-wonderful-always-excited Nicolas Charbonnier (Charbax). The Archos fan was letting us know about an $80 laptop that can, and will, support Android.

• Ubuntu Netbook Remix has become a “brand” almost; people hear the name and instantly know what it is. Changing it may confuse those less enamored with Linux and Ubuntu and lead them to think their OS has been discontinued. It may sound like yet another netbook OS rather than a simply re-branding.

Free Software/Open Source

• At the office, you’ve got a sluggish computer running aging software, and the email system routinely badgers you to delete messages after you blow through the storage limits set by your IT department. Searching your company’s internal Web site feels like being teleported back to the pre-Google era of irrelevant search results.

• How many open source projects are out there? Thousands upon thousands. And out of all those projects, how many are worth paying attention to? Thousands? Hundreds? If you remove the usual suspects (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, GIMP, OpenOffice, Firefox, etc.), you can really start paring down the list. Here are 10 open source projects you might never have heard of — but really should check out.

• As you may recall, Google also tipped off its Theme Gallery a bit early on this tab page just before it launched. Chatter here by Google employees seems to suggest this Extension launch is indeed imminent. The image on the right would look to be some sort of new Chrome menu placeholder icon related to extensions.

• Getting a little tired of one Windows SMB (Server Message Block) security problem after another? Want a reliable and fast file and print server without the Windows server headaches? Then, may I strongly recommend that you give Samba on Linux a try? Samba is an open-source program that had provided file and print services to SMB/CIFS (Common Internet File System) clients for more than a decade.

• Open source tools provide a cost-effective, yet powerful option for data mining. The following contenders adhere to the PMML standard that facilitates model exchange among open source and commercial vendors, providing a definitive route for production deployment of predictive models.

• The Kerala government has adopted free and open source software (FOSS) for the state education department and for e-governance. The curriculum department Saturday has also recommended extension of FOSS to higher secondary schools.

• The implementation of this has been entrusted to the IT@school Project, a mission mode agency under the state’s general education department.

• Red Hat, renowned for its open source solutions, is going head-long into the virtualization space and is hopeful that local companies would adopt what arguably is a double-barreled offering – open source-based virtualization.

• The tech firm said the new product offering, to be distributed and supported locally by MSI-ECS Philippines starting in late 2009, has the potential to benefit local enterprises who need a robust but inexpensive solution for their IT systems.

• But we hope to have a beta for early adopters and developers with some kind of usable basic HTML interface by late November that will run on OS X and Ubuntu. We’re about a third of the way there now, but the interface will make or break this, so we have to get it right and we’re still looking for additional user-interface experts.

• Open-source textbooks offer a way to eliminate the exorbitant costs of buying textbooks. Every semester students are forced to pay hundreds of dollars for textbooks that become outdated in only a few months. With prices on the rise, students and faculty need to come together to find a solution that will address this problem once and for all. Open- source textbooks can do that, and challenge the idea of limited access to knowledge.

• Hot plans for March 2010? Paris in spring doesn’t seem like a bad option, if you want to get some insights into the world of open source and enterprise content management.

• The Kuali Foundation, Inc., is pleased to announce that a group of leading academic research libraries is partnering in the Kuali Open Library Environment (OLE) (pronounced Oh-LAY) project to develop software created specifically for the complex business management and workflow operations of academic and research libraries.

• Xorcom was established in 2004, when we identified the potential of the open source telephony trend. We were especially intrigued by the Asterisk Open SourcePBX ( News – Alert), which back then was still quite immature, but the direction was clear. With the understanding that this approach was destined to change the market completely, we set out to become a leading vendor in open source telephony market.

• As the number of virtual worlds proliferates, Second Life is beset on all sides — niche worlds, big social worlds, high-end worlds, inexpensive worlds, browser-based worlds, kid worlds, business worlds and many more.

• Tech Data, as The VAR Guy expected, is the latest distributor to launch an open source channel initiative. Tech Data’s effort (called Open Tech) follows a Synnex-Red Hat initiative called the Open Source Channel Alliance. But are distributors really ready to support open source in the IT channel? Yes and no. Here’s why.

• All virtualization software in this week’s article is released under the GPL-specifically GPL version 2. Software released under the GPL is free. Free, under the GPL, means that you have the freedom to use, examine, change, redistribute and even sell the software as your own.

Mozilla

• Mozilla’s experimental app that syncs up the “Firefox experience” across multiple browsers has been promoted to beta status.

• Mozilla’s homegrown tool for synchronizing Firefox across computers and devices graduates to beta and introduces incremental syncing and a more streamlined, less obtrusive experience. Mozilla Weave 1.0 beta 1 looks and feels far more polished than its predecessors.

• [...]

• Weave is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux users.

MySQL

• Oracle’s case for buying Sun Microsystems has failed to convince the European Commission, which issued a statement of objections to the deal on Sunday (15 November).

CMS

• Packt Publishing is pleased to announce that WordPress has won the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. WordPress has won this Award for the first time in the past four years, earning itself a place in the Hall of Fame category for the Award next year.

• The Drupal 7 code freeze triggered a lot of retrospective about Drupal core, and the Drupal core development model. Some of these discussions are collectively referred to as “smallcore”.

Symbian

• Mahindra Satyam announced today that it has joined the Symbian Foundation, which, together with its ecosystem, is creating an open and complete mobile software platform.

• In the battle of the open-source mobile platforms, developers have at least two choices: Google Android, which is open source but (relatively) closed development, or Symbian, which is open source…once it gets around to releasing the full source code.

Openness

• Just like physicians, the best educators stay informed with the latest developments in their field. Luckily, it doesn’t take anything more than time to have access to quality journals for educators. The following open access journals provide top-notch scholarly information available at no cost. Most of these journals are published just once or a few times a year, so subscribe to several so you can keep up-to-date on the latest research coming out of the field of education.

• Where to watch free movies online? Let’s get you started. First, we have listed dozens of free, high quality films that you can watch online. Then, below, you can find movie sites that feature free movie collections. Classics, international, film noir, documentaries, indies — they’re all here, waiting to be watched. So please

• That is: digitising content that is out of copyright, in the public domain, and then making us pay through the nose – us as in muggins public, which has kept the British Library going for two centuries thanks to our taxes, in case you’d forgotten – for the privilege of viewing it online.

• Thanks a bunch, BL, for locking up “an increasing proportion of the nation’s intellectual output” behind a paywall, where few will ever see it: that’s what spreading knowledge is all about, isn’t it? Great work from a quondam great institution, more millstone than milestone…

Leftovers

• I decided to write another rather basic level article because there are so many people I meet who have heard a bit about the oil situation, and it is hard to point to one single article to give an overview of some of the current issues. Regular readers will find many repeats of graphs. There are some new ones, as well, from the Denver ASPO-USA conference. Because there is so much to tell, the story gets a little long.

• Valerie Plame Wilson cannot publicize details of her work as a CIA operative, even though a government official already outed her as an agent in an attempt to discredit her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, a federal appeals court says.

• In May 2007, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency, based at Fort Meade, Md., to launch a sophisticated attack on an enemy thousands of miles away without firing a bullet or dropping a bomb.

• At the request of his national intelligence director, Bush ordered an NSA cyberattack on the cellular phones and computers that insurgents in Iraq were using to plan roadside bombings. The devices allowed the fighters to coordinate their strikes and, later, post videos of the attacks on the Internet to recruit followers. According to a former senior administration official who was present at an Oval Office meeting when the president authorized the attack, the operation helped U.S. forces to commandeer the Iraqi fighters’

• An angry aide to Rep. Ron Paul, an iPhone and $4,700 in cash have forced the Transportation Security Administration to quietly issue two new rules telling its airport screeners they can only conduct searches related to airplane safety.

• The TSA says you can’t carry a snow-globe onto a plane, even if it fits in your freedom baggie, because they can’t measure how much liquid it contains, and therefore it must contain more than three oz of potential explosive, um, water.

• The George W. Bush administration expressed concern future administrations might not use the legal amnesty it wanted to give the nation’s telecommunication companies that were being sued for assisting the president’s warrantless, electronic wiretapping program, according to internal documents released Thursday.

• Of course, the whole thing is silly. Why would the telcos need immunity if they hadn’t broken the law? The only reason to push for immunity was because they obviously had broken the law. The entire push for immunity was never really about protecting the telcos, but about protecting the federal government from having to admit that it clearly broke the law as stated concerning oversight of wiretaps.

• The body responsible for managing Atlantic bluefin tuna has decided not to suspend the fishery in response to concerns over dwindling stocks.

Finance

• Protesters rallied outside of Goldman Sachs’ Washington office office Monday and railed against big bonuses and “Too Big To Fail” banks. The SEIU and Public Citizen, a non-profit public interest group, organized the demonstration. The protesters delivered a letter demanding Goldman use its bonus money to help struggling families.

• The event was organized by the Service Employees International Union and the community group National People’s Action, which staged a similar protest outside the Chicago offices of Goldman and Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) last month.

• The event will be held outside 101 Constitution Ave. N.W., an office building that’s home to many of the most powerful lobbyists and corporations in town, including Goldman.

• Blankfein denies that Goldman Sachs “needed to be” bailed out by US taxpayers, but Arlidge notes, “sure, he took $10 billion from Washington’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp). But the bank has since repaid the cash, with healthy interest — 23%.” That’s nice, but how much has Goldman Sachs taken from the Federal Reserve, which is an absolute liability of US taxpayers? The Fed, a deceitfully sadistic organization, has ultimately refused to say, which is entirely unacceptable.

• Is this really the “God’s work” that you claim you are carrying out?

• It’s not God’s work to kick families out into the street.

• It’s not God’s work to leave people without health insurance.

• It is not God’s work to put greed over human need and use other people’s money to pay yourselves huge bonuses.

• When we converge on Goldman Sachs’ office today, we will demand that Goldman place their expected $23 billion in bonus money into a fund to help Americans keep their homes in this time of need. We will ask Goldman to put country over company and to truly be their brothers’ and sisters’ keeper.

• Those 23 billion dollars could prevent every single expected foreclosure in America in 2010. That would truly be God’s work — and the American way.

• No one gets to Blankfein’s position by saying dumb things to reporters. This makes me think he knew exactly what he was saying and simply didn’t care what people would think. It makes perfect sense if he believes what he said to be true.

• Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sold 158 condominiums in a foreclosed project outside Miami for about $113,000 each, roughly one-third the cost of land and construction.

Internet/Censorship/Web Abuse/Rights

• Now, that’s a good response. It’s human. It explains the situation without PR/marketing speak that a recipient would know was bogus. It is the type of response that makes someone feel good about American Airlines (mostly). So, how did AA respond?

• It fired the guy.

• Apparently, higher level folks at American Airlines didn’t like the fact that an employee was actually being open and honest with a customer, took the text from Dustin’s post (he hadn’t named the designer), searched through the email system, identified the guy… and fired him… and threatened to sue the guy if he spoke to Dustin again.

• The Royal Oman Police (ROP) raided 121 cyber cafes throughout the country and arrested 212 people for providing illegal Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoiP) service, a senior police officer said here yesterday.

• A libel action over an article that appeared on the website of a South African magazine has been dismissed by a court in England. Evidence suggested that the article had received only four visits from the UK in a two month period.

• So I’m sat in the opening ceremony of the Internet Governance Forum in Sharm El Sheikh – a cosy cinema seat at the further front-right of a giant summit hall – watching the various dignatories giving a wide variety of dull speeches.

• [...]

• Oh no! I’m being censored again

• Just as inevitable as dull speeches at these events is the Grand Censorship Moment. It’s come early this year, barely hours after the doors opened.

• An NHS trust at the forefront of work on the £12.7bn NHS IT scheme has called in police after a breach of smartcard security compromised the confidentiality of hundreds of electronic records.

• According to Cactus Kate, APN instructed editors to spike any stories that could trigger legal action or are otherwise risky.

• The New Zealand Herald has never been considered the nation’s hardest newspaper, but Cactus Kate’s APN Chicken Out says the company is no longer participating in ‘real media’.

• Having failed to intimidate me, the Quilliam foundation have now written to my webhost in the Netherlands, threatening to sue them in England (English law claims effective universal jurisdiction on libel). They are demanding that my webhost pays damages to the Directors of the Quilliam Foundation.

Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

• A SMALL TOWN in the former British colony of Virginia is paying the price of not standing up to the MPAA.

• Coshocton, which is in Ohio and does not have a great tradition of standing up to authority, decided that it would be a wizard wheeze to turn control of its municipal network over to the movie companies’ cartel. After all it did not want any nasty ‘pirates’ in its fine little town, it wanted only plain decent folk who buy lots of gingham and bake lots of apple pies.

• Imagine its shock when the MPAA forced the town to shut down its entire free municipal WiFi network because of a single instance of a single user illegally downloading a copyrighted movie.

• Earlier this week we reported how a free, tiny (1,000 feet total) municipal Wi-Fi network in Ohio was forced to shut down after an MPAA legal warning. A network user had apparently transferred a file copyrighted by Sony Pictures, and instead of risking a costly legal fight, the network decided to simply shut down.

• Sandryds Handels AB has been all over Swedish Radio today, Torrentfreak reports, saying it plans to use a tweaked version of the Pirate Bay logo on a range of USB sticks.

• The singer drops the sugar-coated simpering and shoots from the lip about the music industry and her new business model to save it — which could make her the world’s richest recording artist

• She’s working closely with various brands to help fund the business model. She’s selling other product lines such as makeup. But, she’s also come up with some unique “reasons to buy.” For example, she got the magazine Elle to produce an entire issue dedicated to her — but the only way to get it is to buy her new CD. In other words, she’s giving people a reason to buy the CD. And… even better, she (or, her people) sold the ads that are in the magazine and gets to keep all of that money. It’s the superstar blend of recognizing that content and advertising have really become the same thing.

• Hopefully, with more mainstream publications finally picking up on this, both the press and politicians will begin to recognize that the only real “crisis” in the music industry is for those who have stupidly relied on selling plastic discs for way too long. There are plenty of revenue opportunities for musicians, and because of that (in combination with better and cheaper tools for music creation), the actual music industry is thriving at levels never seen before.

• Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra borrowed whole passages from Sir Thomas North’s Life of Mark Antony he said, including the description of her barge: “The poop was beaten gold; purple the sails . . .”

Interview with Ted Ts’o of The Linux Foundation/IBM Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

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