● 12.02.09

● Links 02/12/2009: Diet Chromium Emerges

Posted in News Roundup at 10:40 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Use it in front of the TV or in your kitchen. Install Linux on it. It will cost you nothing to try. You burn a Linux image onto a USB drive or a CD, put it in your old computer and install. You then have a working system. While it may not be fast, I bet it would still be good to look up recipes in the kitchen or movie actors in front of the tv. We have an old laptop that regularly overheats and has to be plugged in sitting on the coffee table in front of the TV just to answer random questions. (Or take a quick peak at email or Facebook.)

• Do you know what people think about us linuxers? No Clue!! Get some Popcorn coz I am going to tell you a great story. A long long time ago, back when linux was getting powerful, there was a boy who started using it. He liked it so much that he would spend all the day learning and exploring.

• The only solution is to identify the infected desktops and take them off the network.. pronto.

• An infected Windows workstation of XP vintage often needs a clean image reinstalled to fix it. This means of course keeping a stock of up to date Windows workstation images. Next, all staff and students (if it is a school or college) need to have their usb sticks checked to save them trashing their often even more vulnerable home machines. Lots of work.

• Thanks to SAMBA and OpenLDAP companies have been able to take advantage of the cost savings and performance offered by Linux infrastructure and keep their Windows workstations. They wish to do the latter because sometimes they need to use Windows-only applications and sometimes they wish to avoid any retraining overheads for their users.

Desktop

• With Linux offerings from HP, Dell, and Lenovo, the big names are covered. Heck, it is not hard to find a eeePC running Linux if you really want one. How about Penguin Computing, Linux Certified, System 76, Zareason, and other countless Linux specialty or Linux friendly white box vendors? All of these companies would not be in business if there was no money to be made by competing with Microsoft. Once ChromeOS kicks in, it will be all over for Microsoft Windows.

• Watching the carnival of publicity for both Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Windows 7, I can’t help but think that the world has forgotten just what an operating system is for. An operating system should not be a big feature of a computer. An operating system should instead be the platform that enables you to get on with using the computer in question, with the minimum of fuss and intrusion. Sure, it’s good to have useful tools and features in there, but surely the purpose of such features is as an add-on, so that the user can pick what they intuitively require. If it needs a press release and several big-money presentations to explain why someone needs a particular extra or gizmo, then there’s a compelling argument that they don’t need it in the first place.

• 4) Automatically update all my software and the OS.

• With Windows, I notice that there are regular updates, patches, security, fixes, etc. to the OS. With Linux, my updates include the OS as well as all the applications! Needless to say, I’m happy that I can obtain the latest features, fixes, updates etc. in one update action on Linux, without having to manually update each application (which I have to do on my Windows box).

• The Dell Precision M6500 offers Intel’s Core i7 processors, Nvidia Quadro FX or ATI FirePro graphics, as well as up to 16GB of memory and the option of four memory slots. There’s also a choice of Linux or Windows operating systems, and up to three hard drives.

• The screen is 17-inches and an optional RGB LED unit is available with 100% color gamut. OS options include 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows 7, Vista, XP, and Red Hat Linux. Dell also offers the Quadro FX 3800M GPU as an option.

• IGEL Technology, the world’s third largest thin client vendor (2009 by revenue, IDC), today introduced its new Linux Universal Desktop firmware adding support for new hardware, additional user customization options, and enhanced multimedia and virtualization functionality to its wide range of Linux-based thin clients.

Server

• Just about a year ago, Enterprise VoIPplanet spoke with the folks at PIKA Technologies about their then-new WARP appliance, the popular Asterisk development platform in a compact, telephony-equipped Linux system unit.

• SYNAQ, the Johannesburg-based Linux and open source managed services and software services company, has made a significant impact on the local IT scene since its establishment five years ago, by two (very) young entrepreneurs, Yossi Hasson and David Jacobson.

• eCube Systems, a leader in legacy evolution and application modernization, today announced that it has achieved the IBM Ready for LINUX mark for its NXTera™ high performance middleware. This mark certifies NXTera has met compatibility and integration specifications established by IBM for LINUX on the System z mainframe, which run the daily computer transactions for many of the world’s top banks and multinational firms.

• SunGard’s MarketMap provides Tinbergen with real-time market data flows that can help the company automate and streamline its processes for monitoring real-time market information, ranging from asset prices to executed orders. The solution’s Java-based feed offered easy integration with Tinbergen’s existing systems, using the firm’s Linux platform.

• It’s time for a little VM recreation and you don’t even have to get sweaty in the process.

• The significant difference in Linux version does not speak about the software quality or the drivers` availability, but the support offered. Depending upon the Linux distribution package, the user may get a quick and 24/7 paid support, and this should well suit any corporate environment. Purchasing the operating system and hardware together ensures the support for installed hardware, else it may be required researching to ensure the motherboard, network adapter, chipset and others are supported by the Linux version. The other non Linux options include OpenSolaris and many variants of Berkley Software distribution.

Google

• People keep asking me about chromium (the generic name for Google Chrome), specifically, when it will be part of Fedora proper. Why do they ask me this? Well, because I’ve been packaging built-from-source-against-Fedora RPM packages here: http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium/

• That is the key issue for Chrome OS, of course, whether or not we are ready to embrace the cloud as the core of our computing experience. Personally, I’m of two-minds. One side recognizes that there are some undeniable advantages to off-loading a great deal of my computing elsewhere, whether it be via cloud storage, web-based applications, or even remote processing. Having used an Android-based G1 phone for almost a year now, I am already deeply involved in the Google-sphere, relying on Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Reader for much of my

• Two weeks ago Google released the source code of their upcoming Chrome OS operating system, and thanks to some fast and hard-working developers, you don’t have to be a coder to try it out.

• The war might prove not nearly as bitter as the war waged between avid Windows fans and die-hard Apple supporters, but considering the jabs between Google’s Chrome OS and Jolicloud — a new Ubuntu Linux-based cloud operating system for netbooks — the battle looks like it could get pretty heated.

• Now that the Chromium base code for Google Chrome OS is readily available, we’re going to be seeing a lot more projects like Diet Chromium popping up.

• 1. AdBlock+ To those of you who can’t live without Firefox because of the ad-block extensions, perhaps you will now give Chrome a try because of this.

Applications

• Performous is a karaoke game for Linux that brings the popular past time to the operating system in a unique and entertaining way. Performous has recently seen an update with the release of version 0.4.0

• Vector Networks, a leader in desktop asset and service management solutions, today announced PC-Duo v11.5 with support for Windows 7, Macs, and Linux as well as significant enhancements to functionality and connectivity.

• After thinking about it for a while it all makes sense now. It seems that I had the shell script bug, everything must be done in the shell! In reality while the shell is great and all, it is not without its flaws. There are somethings the shell is great at and should be used for, then there others it shouldn’t.

Instructionals

Desktop Environments

• Window Maker is an X11 window manager originally designed to provide integration support for the GNUstep Desktop Environment. In every way possible, it reproduces the elegant look and feel of the NEXTSTEP user interface. It is fast, feature rich, easy to configure, and easy to use. It is also free software, with contributions being made by programmers from around the world.

KDE

• Going a bit more deeply on how KDE SC 4.4 will support multitouch, here are 3 longer videos:

• The first one shows marble. Is now possible (with the usual disclaimer on devices and systems that support it, hoping it will become a more pervasive feature) to zoom the earth with a two fingers gesture, making a retty natural interacion

• OGG version

• The second one shows Plasma: it’s possible to move, resize and rotate the widgets with two fingers, making them a bit more “real objects”.

• For the last screencasts I had to do, I needed some tool were it’s easy to cut little pieces of various short movie files and that could have let me to assemble them togeher, maybe with some simple not too heavy transition effects.

• [...]

• Since it seems nowdays I can’t finish an entry without a screencast, here it is s quick and dirty “making of” of the Plasma multitouch video, well not actually that one, but shows how fast is possible to create a simple montage.

• OGG version

Distributions

Gentoo

• Despite being heavily involved in Ubuntu advocacy and promotion, being a member of the Ubuntu project, and using it on my personal systems, I’ve had to keep my servers and development machines running Gentoo.

• [...]

• Python 3 is a great example of this; Gnome 3 will apparently use Python 3 for many applets, and Gnome 3′s release schedule sets it for inclusion in Ubuntu 10.10 (next Fall), but at present Python 3.1 is packaged but none of the 3rd party packages are available for it – even those which explicitly support Python 3 already.

Red Hat Family

• With the release of fedora 12 ,we decided to give it a try with a 64 bit live cd on a Toshiba machine.There is no good difference in appearance with the older editions of fedora ,just some changes in Nautilus icons.What to say,they offer a clear and clean appearance.

Debian Family

• After long time I’m posting this. In this time, I got a fantastic experience of switching myself from ubuntu to debian.

• Anti has announced the first public beta of antiX-M8.5. It is available at MEPIS mirrors in the released/antix directory as antiX-M8.5-pt1-beta.iso.

• Ubuntu Forensic is the use of Ubuntu for digital forensic purposes. As it provides a wide range of forensic tools as well as anti-forensic and cracking tools, so it is reliable to investigate a computer crime and analyse digital evidence on it. The significant difference on forensic applications between Ubuntu and Ms Windows is that Ubuntu applications are freeware, while the application running under Ms Windows are commercial. The results obtained between these applications are relatively the same. It means that digital forensic analyst should also be well understood on the use of Ubuntu forensic applications as well as Ms Windows’s applications. If they do it, so they will have many forensic tools which can be applied in the investigation/analysis. When a tool does not give satisfied results, they should be able to use other tools either under Ubuntu or Ms Windows to yield the best results.

• Second course this week is with the lovely Martin Owens. He’s a programmer and an advocate and educator for the open source community. He’s also working to create the English translation of the Ubunchu manga. A comic book about an open source sys admin after school club in Japan – who can fault that?

• Mint 8 didn’t blow me away quite so much as their last release. It worked well as far as I could tell and there were some definite advantages to their package selections (lack of Evolution for one). The improvements to MintInstall continue to make it a pleasant and useful tool.

• I’m not going to immediately wipe my Ubuntu Karmic install on the laptop for this release of Mint. It might grow on me, but for now I’m happy with the parent distro. Maybe Mint 9 will have some must-have feature for me, or at least a couple of games. Hey, I can dream.

• In summary, Linux Mint is really a unique distro, catering to a wide audience. People who just came from windows would most like feel comfortable with Linux Mint and Linux Mint does really work great with older computers They just need to do something about Ubiquity. The MintInstall software manager is really great, making installing applications really a breeze. IMHO, Mintinstall is what we need to break those biased opinions that installing software is difficult for Linux

• The MintUpdate is also a Plus point. Many new users screw their systems up through updates. ( especially major ones) This surely would help a lot. I went in with the opinion that Linux Mint would be just like any other remastered distro, but came out changed! Its really a great distro.

• I personally would recommend it to any one who just came out of the windowed world or any one who is looking for a light and simple system. Linux Mint 8 is really on the right track on making Linux user friendly..

Devices/Embedded

• Archos has created quite a stir when he was introducing a version of the Archos 5 Internet Media Tablet runs on Android to be the owner of, based on Linux operating system announced. We examine here the Cyber-shot Archos 5 Internet Tablet with flash memory, 32 GB with about 230 prizes. Two models of thick disks are also available: a 160 GB version for about 250 and 500 GB for a 290 or thereabouts.

Phones

• Not content with the current crop of high profile smartphone launches – Motorola Droid and Nokia N900 leading the pack – the industry is full of talk of what new devices may appear after the new year. Of course, Apple leads the way, with sources claiming glimpses of the successor to the iPhone 3GS, as well as the latest variations on speculation about the ‘iTablet’. Then there is the reputed ‘Google phone’, but Nokia refuses to join in the fun, promising only one more device based on its Maemo Linux operating system in the coming year.

• Nokia Corp. on Wednesday predicted that global mobile phone unit sales would recover to rise 10% next year, forecast an improvement in the operating margin at its main division and vowed to revamp its creaky user interface.

• Zii Labs has announced the Trinity smart/media phone platform for the Android and Plaszma operating system. The platform is a complete 3.5G/4G smartphone development platform supporting optimized Android and Linux-based Plaszma OS’.

• Web Development for Mobile Devices is the latest rage. But what if you want an “off-line” web application? No problem!

• Emblaze, now renamed after its first smartphone, has often made a surprisingly loud noise at events like Mobile World Congress, showing some genuinely innovative thinking on user interfaces. It has collaborated with Access on a user experience called

Sub-notebooks

• Right now, however, ARM netbooks are really only able to run Linux distros tailored to their non-x86 processors. On top of that, there aren’t many to choose from at the moment.

• After attending the Ubuntu Developer Summit, Shane Fagan lamented “Where’s my ARM netbook?” noting that only three models were available (four if you count a board-only unit). With Intel’s Atom able to run Windows and just about every interesting Linux distro under the sun like Moblin and Jolicloud, ARM has their work cut out.

• But as Anson points out, “This image comes with absolutely no support of any kind and is to be considered highly experimental and completely unstable [but] with a network connection, ChromiumOS shines. The Chromium browser is extremely fast and makes for a great web-centric browsing experience. Boot time appears quick too — about 12 seconds from hitting the power button.” Sounds like good Linux techie fun to me!

• Just to put my cards on the table, I think the Intel Atom Developer Program makes about as much sense as a netbook with a 17 inch screen. The whole point of netbooks is that they’re fully functional computers, unlike smartphones and other mobile devices that offer only a limited feature set. And that means that you can run virtually any program on a Windows or Linux netbook that you could run on a larger, more traditional computer.

• A free software supporter alerted us to a crippled version of GNU/Linux shipping on some of Acer’s netbooks.

• A few weeks ago, a free software supporter encountered an Acer netbook that came pre-loaded with a distribution of GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux has made real headway in the netbook market, so nothing unusual here, and you would think any free software supporter would be delighted to encounter GNU/Linux pre-installed on a mass market product.

Free Software/Open Source

• CLM Converts are proclaiming their businesses can’t function without these tools. Others worry about privacy issues and upsetting customers, but most haven’t found that to be a problem. Converts recommend starting small. Start with marketing automation. It doesn’t take nearly as much time as most think. Once comfortable with that, move on to real time behavior monitoring and situational activity alerts. As a result, CLM users claim the financial rewards are high.

• Looking back through our 451 CAOS Links posts there are a number of examples of companies “going open” in 2009 – either embarking on an open source project for the first time or expanding their engagement with open source through new initiatives.

• The Open Learning Centre and Open Forum Europe worked on behalf of The National Computing Centre to produce a white paper examining the significant advantages and the potential hurdles for business when considering Open Source Software.

• Paterva describes Maltego as an open source intelligence and forensics application that can import and correlate data from almost any publicly available online source, including social networks, search engines and PGP key databases. A community edition of the tool also can be downloaded.

• The application can be used to determine relationships and real-world connections between people, groups of people such as those in a social network, companies and Web sites. It can also be used to find links between domains, DNS names, IP addresses and even documents and files on the Internet.

• We adopted open source mainly because we can build an application suiting our needs. Moreover, if we are locked in a proprietary set up, we will be forced to do frequent updates. Often we have found that most of updates do not give the level of business benefits that we look for. To put it simply, we do not want to be forced to do an upgrade just because a new version is available.

• Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC®) and Digium®, the Asterisk® Company, today announced that all exhibit space has sold out at their expanded Digium|Asterisk World, scheduled to take place January 20-22, 2010 as part of ITEXPO East in Miami, Florida.

• The Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (Yashada) along with the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has developed a software called eGranthalaya for the automation of libraries.

• If the vendor’s product strategy breaks the underlying contract of mutual benefit with companies and people that contribute code, many of the benefits of open source software beyond cost reduction are potentially eliminated.

• Moreover, such vendors might risk losing their differentiation from traditional closed sourced vendors long term. In such a case one might raise the question whether the ultimate goal is exploiting communities in order to be eventually acquired as opposed to promoting communities, the backbone for innovation, vendor independence and quality.

• Commercial software vendors, of course, are hoping this is all just a fad that will go away once the economy improves. In reality, the open source economy is the new enterprise software economy.

• The Tides Foundation Pizzigati Prize will award $10,000 to an open source software developer whose work is helping nonprofits succeed

• Financial services organisations are going beyond operating systems when it comes to the use of open source technology.

• Opengear (www.opengear.com) today announced it has joined the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) and will work to contribute software that will expand the use of safe, secure computing protocols in Federal computing environments. As a part of Opengear’s commitment to open source, Opengear has extended the OpenSSL cryptographic module — for the first time making it FIPS 140-2 compliant for ARM-based processors.

• Telling people to pay you and go away worked for an amazingly long time. It sounds like it shouldn’t. It sounds a bit like theft. But software is a miracle, and for decades EULA Ware was the only model there was.

• Open source companies, on the other hand, they have to use their imagination.

• Open source has come a long way since Linux, with the advent of software programs in many universities. There are open source and freeware programs available for everything from antivirus software to media players. Open source differs from freeware in that the code is freely available and can be modified under certain conditions, while freeware code is not.

• In theory, users could replace most of their purchased software with open source software. For example, you can use Songbird as a music player, OpenOffice.org in place of Microsoft Office, Gimp to replace Photoshop, and AVG as antivirus. But these substitutions are not yet commonplace.

CrunchPad

• What many people seem to have missed in their coverage of the CrunchPad’s death is the fact that Michael Arrington has repeatedly said that he would “open source the specs”. Now Phillip Torrone from MAKE magazine is asking Arrington to do just that.

• Phillip Torrone at Make, noting that Arrington has repeatedly described the project as open source, is challenging him to release what designs and code he has for the tinkering community at large to play with.

Mozilla

• I’ve been using the beta and release candidate builds and have found them to be as stable as Thunderbird 2, but with far less memory hogging.

• In the Best Updated Add-On category, the enhanced find utility Smart Find, book price searcher Book Burro and the favourites extension Speed Dial took the three grand prizes. Best Game and Entertainment Add-on was awarded to Destroy The Web’s extension which turns the contents of any page into a shoot-em-up video game. Grocery List Generator took the prize for Best Shopping Add-on. The grand prize winners in these other catagories will recieve a 13″ Mac Book Pro and a package of software books and other items.

Databases

• The starting point for all of these solutions will be LAMP and open source applications. But each will focus initially on automation to simplify the effort, like RDS. Then they will deliver interoperability. Finally they will innovate in proprietary ways to deliver a better experience. And with each step they will further establish their ownership of the customer. This is why every major technology company, with the exception of Oracle, is assembling their own cloud solution, because they don’t want someone else owning their customers.

• A few weeks back I met with a senior architect of a large bank to discuss how open source might fit into the bank’s strategy, particularly in the area of database where they had recently had some pretty unpleasant price increases levied by two of their incumbent suppliers during renegotiation of their corporate site licenses.

CMS

• Squiz UK today announced the availability of its enterprise-class Supported Open Source CMS, MySource Matrix, on a SaaS (Software as a Service) basis. The new package enables start ups, brands and enterprises to deploy sophisticated Matrix sites with more security, flexibility, scalability and cost control.

• Squiz UK today announced the successful launch of the University of Westminster’s new website, based on MySource Matrix Open Source CMS. The site was co-developed and implemented in only eight weeks and hands complete control back to the university’s content and technical teams.

• Hippo, the leading developer of Web-based, open source Enterprise CMS / Portal software, has partnered with Kapow Technologies, the leader in Web data services for business applications. Under the partnership Kapow’s Web Data Server helps companies streamline and automate the process of migrating their existing Web content to Hippo CMS. This allows businesses to perform migration of any Web based content in one tenth of the time and cost associated with traditional methods.

• The support forum moderators were the first people to get credit from Ms Wells. These include those going by the WordPress.org usernames Otto42, jeremyclark13, MichaelH, samboll and Chris_K, while Moshu, Podz and Kafkaesqui also received a mention.

• The White House recently adopted Drupal’s content management system for its site. The system has gained attention as a platform for social media and semantic Web applications.

• 3281d Consulting is very pleased to announce that a new era on drupal.org has begun: Drupal distributions (also known as “installation profiles”) can now be automatically packaged with Drupal core and all of their required dependencies. When you download the distribution, you just unpack it into a web root directory, visit install.php, and you’re done. This should vastly lower the barriers to getting a new Drupal site up and running. Please read on if you’ve ever considered installing a Drupal distribution or if you maintain one on drupal.org.

• I’m trying to rethink the architecture. Joomla as it exists now is based on the same principal concepts as Mambo in 2000, namely being centered around software designed to run on a $6 a month hosting account on some offshore server.

Releases

• Opsview is Open Source and made available under the GNU General Public License.

• WSO2 is moving from supplying light weight SOA services to the enterprise to providing middleware as a service for cloud operations.

• Sheetster 1.1 offers much of the functionality found in Excel along with Web 2.0 features, such as document management, collaboration, sharing and chat. Sheetster can be run online or offline and is Open Source, so developers can easily extend or embed it within their Web applications.

• Sun xVM VirtualBox enables users to create “virtual machines” in their host operating system so that they can install any guest OS, facilitating the development, cross-platform running and testing of multi-tier applications on a single computer.

Government

• A new government-wide IT strategy, refreshing the four-year-old Transformational Government programme and aligning it with new Treasury initiatives, is likely to be published alongside the Pre-Budget Report on 9 December, UKauthority.com understands. It will also accompany Treasury secretary Liam Byrne’s ‘smarter government’ report, which sets out plans for rationalising Whitehall.

• Open source and SaaS under consideration to cut $100m annual bill on software licences

• The Dutch Government is about to publish as open source OS Toolbox PSC, a set of software tools that EU member states can use to offer or improve their points of single contact for entrepreneurs that want to start business or offer their services anywhere in the EU. The software will be made available on the OSOR Forge, the open source software repository and development platform of the European Commission.

• The Swedish National Police Board (SNPB) estimates to save about 20 million euro in the next five years by switching to open source application servers, open source database servers and standard computer server hardware, according to a case study published by the Open Source Observatory and Repository.

• UGO (Urgence Guide Orientation, emergency orientation guide) a collection of open source tools that allows social workers to quickly find available shelters for children placed under the care of the administration, received two awards last week [week from 23 to 27 November 2009].

Openness

• The other reasons that open source automobiles are interesting is that it overcomes the slowness of innovation we see in traditional traditional car manufacturing. The designs are open sourced. This means that designers from around the world are able to generate innovation either alone or in teams with others and deploy them as plans that have the potential to get built (including electric vehicles).

• Recently Jimmy Conrad wrote a piece at ESPN’s Soccernet about his vision for MLS. He likens it to Linux, but honestly, his ideas are not in the mold of Linux. Sure, he’s willing to respond and listen to feedback, but he is not necessarily advocating adopting an Open Source and/or Democratic model for MLS, just for his own “blog” at Soccernet.

Programming

Leftovers

• Not that Epstein is fully satisfied with Sequoia’s disclosure. Reading the company’s license, it remains unclear if reviewers are permitted to compile the source code so they can run the resulting binaries in their own laboratories. Simply reading the source code makes it hard to know how the various pieces work together.

• Government solicitors have granted an extra week for solicitors acting for Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon, to lodge a judicial review on the Home Secretary’s recent decision to allow extradition proceedings against Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon to proceed.

Finance

• Of all the villains responsible for the Great Economic Wipeout, the Federal Reserve is pretty far down the list. It’s certainly behind members of Congress who deregulated the banks in 1999, allowing once staid institutions to gamble recklessly. Then there are notorious CEOs like Martin Sullivan of AIG, Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial, and Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers whose greed and hubris wrecked their companies. Crooked mortgage brokers, rapacious Wall Street traders, and millions of irresponsible homeowners were key supporting actors in the revolting drama, too.

• At least some of the inquiries are focused on potential information leaks around health-care mergers of the past three years, these people said. Some retail-industry deals also are a subject of the SEC inquiries, these people said, including Sears Holdings Corp.’s aborted pursuit of home-furnishings retailer Restoration Hardware in 2007.

• “I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.

• I called Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag to ask whether it’s true that Goldman partners feel they need handguns to protect themselves from the angry proletariat. He didn’t call me back. The New York Police Department has told me that “as a preliminary matter” it believes some of the bankers I inquired about do have pistol permits. The NYPD also said it will be a while before it can name names.

• That’s what a money manager told Bethany McLean, the author of a big new Vanity Fair piece, about the empire that is Goldman Sachs. The claim is kind of funny given the news that just broke about Goldman execs stocking up on firearms.

• In his Invest with an Edge, he says, “While the firm conjures up images of Gordon Gekko saying ‘Greed is good,’ that’s not necessarily a bad thing if you own the stock.” Here’s his review.

• “Formerly an investment bank, Goldman is now a commercial bank, a change that allowed it to take billions in taxpayer assistance during the financial calamity of 2008.

• The entire battery of charges against Goldman is, of course, lengthy. There is the assertion that the bank received a de facto bailout through its investments in AIG, which McLean says clearly helped Goldman and the entire financial system. Goldman, for its part, has always asserted that it would not have gone under had AIG collapsed. And McLean also addressed the benefits Goldman Sachs continues to receive by virtue of its transition to a bank-holding company, and its $21.6 billion in funds still guaranteed by the FDIC.

• The former First Daughter and her investment banker boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky became engaged before Thanksgiving, ABC News’ Jake Tapper reports.

• For fiscal hawks, we’re about to enter a lost decade, as Uncle Sam is now expected to rack up $9 trillion in public debt between 2010 and 2019. CNNMoney.com calculates much of that gaudy sum will be in the form of interest. “More than half. In fact, $4.8 trillion” will be nothing more than interest payments, CNNMoney.com bluntly writes.

• Employees received the seasonally-festive, “no parties of 12 ” command via voicemail blast as part the CEO’s Weekly PR Blunder Address.

Internet/Censorship/Web Abuse/Rights

• “White space” networking, which will use unused TV spectrum to deliver broadband services, has moved a step closer. Last week, the Federal Communications Commission said it would begin establishing databases that will warn white space devices when existing TV signals are present, according to a story on our sister site eWEEK.

• [...]

• Both Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Google’s Larry Page are said to have personally lobbied the FCC in favor of the use of white spaces.

Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

• Javier “Barrapunto” Candeira writes, “Last Monday the Spanish Government sent the parliament the latest draft for the Ley de Economia Sostenible (Sustainable Economy Act), which contained riders modifying the current laws on copyright and interactive services. These amendments give the Spanish Ministy of Culture the administrative power to take down websites (or order ISPs to block those hosted overseas), all without a court order and in the name of ‘safeguarding Intellectual Property Laws against Internet Piracy’.

• I got something in the mail last week I’d been wanting for years: a Too Much Joy royalty statement from Warner Brothers that finally included our digital earnings. Though our catalog has been out of print physically since the late-1990s, the three albums we released on Giant/WB have been available digitally for about five years. Yet the royalty statements I received every six months kept insisting we had zero income, and our unrecouped balance ($395,277.18!)* stubbornly remained the same.

• He starts out by insisting that he won’t put his book on the Kindle or any digital book format because he’s afraid of piracy — but that makes no sense at all. By not giving readers what they want, he’s actually encouraging more piracy. There are probably plenty of people actively willing to buy ebook versions of his book, and his response is that because of piracy, he won’t offer it to them.

• Of course, there are so many fallacies wrapped up in this argument, it’s difficult to even know where to start (though, one would have hoped that a journalism professor would have done the decent thing and checked into these things a bit more carefully before writing a silly opinion piece based on a variety of myths):

• Basically increasing the value of those games so that it’s easier to play them and easier to keep playing them. And, in response, Games Workshop sends out its lawyers? How does that possibly make any sense at all?

• Presumably courts are more willing to ping ISPs because they are perceived as having more capacity than a bus company to control the actions of their passengers, but this is an illusion. A bus company has much the same ability to control its passengers, as an ISP does its users. The difference however is that courts respect the rights of passengers, but don’t respect the rights of users. The bus company’s passengers have a right not to be subject to a demeaning search by the bus company and courts are happy to respect that right. However, courts do not afford the same respect to passengers when the fire up their internet browser. They ought to.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the DayTara Hunt wraps up the Valentines weekend CitizenSpace build-in (2009)Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating. 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

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.