● 12.08.09

● Links 08/12/2009: Dell Vostro V13 $150 Cheaper with GNU/Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 7:36 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Summary: · Announced Distro: Ubuntu Christian Edition 6.0 Beta Brings Server Edition · Announced Distro: Calculate Linux 10.0 Is Now Available for Download · Announced Distro: SystemRescueCd 1.3.3 Has Linux Kernel 2.6.31.6 · Other News: VirtualBox 3.1.0, KDE 4.3.4 and Linux Kernel 2.6.32 · Video Clip of the Week: KDE SC 4.4 Preview

• Dell has introduced a new low-cost ultrathin notebook, the Vostro V13. The system closely resembles Dell’s recently released flagship Adamo, except it’s lighter and a grand cheaper. The Vostro V13 is about 0.65in thin, weighs 3.5lbs and starts at $449 with Ubuntu 9.04 or $599 with Windows 7 Home Premium.

• Here’s another thought. If you were to put a Linux-based operating system on the 800,000 or so workstations now in the NHS and some FOSS productivity software such as OpenOffice, which incidentally will interface with more professional database server systems than many proprietary packages, how much would that cost (other than the man-hours for the installs)? Zilch. Zippo. FA. What if the NHS were to donate 1 GBP for each machine to the Linux distribution developers of their chosen O/S, and 1 GBP towards each OpenOffice installation? That would cost £1,600,000 or less than a third of one percent of the existing discounted Microsoft licensing. That relatively small donation would also ensure some future development of features needed by NHS staff in their chosen software.

• The site is organized by interest group, including Linux, storage and NonStop computing.

• Adding Linux Expertise, Traction with Global Leading Clients

• With over 15 years of software engineering expertise, Cubical delivers service excellence to global industry giants including Fujitsu Services, Nokia Siemens Networks, and EADS. The acquisition of Cubical adds significant expertise for Symbio in Linux and open source product development, leveraging operating environments like Red Hat, SuSE, Maemo, Wind River Linux and OpenEmbedded Linux. This agreement further extends Symbio’s deep domain expertise across mobile, Web, enterprise and embedded technologies, underscoring its commitment to delivering tomorrow’s technology today for world leading innovators.

Papers

• The Call For Papers is Open! If you’re considering presenting at SCALE please review our Call For Papers

• Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that the call for papers is now open for the sixth annual Red Hat Summit and JBoss World. These premier open source events will take place June 22-25, 2010 in Boston at the Seaport World Trade Center.

Server

• I understand the the Linux Ubuntu Cloud is quite nice and uses the tried and tested Eucalyptus technology. Also PostgresSQL seems to work as well as Oracle. It’s all free,open source software.

Google

• The Chrome web browser – which has been available on PCs since September 2008 – is now available for computers running Apple’s operating system, Mac OS X, and for the open-source platform, Linux.

Kernel Space

• To many, the Linux development community appears to be highly open, with access to developers only an email away. To much of the user community, though, the situation looks different, with core developers seemingly as distant and inaccessible as they would be if they were doing proprietary code. Bridging the gap between users and developers is one of the tasks the Linux Foundation has set for itself; the annual End User Summit is intended to help toward that goal.

Instructionals

Games

• Tycoon Games has announced the release of Heileen 2: The Hands of Fate, the sequel to Heileen: A Trip To Bavaria developed for PC, Mac and Linux.

Distributions

New Releases

• xPUD 0.9.2 features a new App Store, allowing users to easily install additional applications. Vergrößern The xPUD developers have released version 0.9.2 their fast, lightweight, Ubuntu-based Linux distribution with a simple web-based user interface. The latest development release of this “Browser OS” includes several improvements and new features.

• Announced on December 7th by Warren Woodford and the hard working MEPIS developers, the first Beta release of the upcoming SimplyMEPIS 8.5 operating system is now available for download, for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. SimplyMEPIS 8.5 is still based on the Debian Lenny Linux distribution, but it is now powered by the recently released Linux kernel 2.6.32 and it is built on top of the KDE 4.3.2 desktop environment.

Red Hat Family

Devices/Embedded

• Freescale Semiconductor announced two Linux-ready system-on-chips based on its PowerPC-driven QorIQ platform. The QorIQ P1012 and dual-core P1021 SoCs are similar to Freescale’s QorIQ P1013 and P1022 processors, respectively, but add the company’s microcode programming QUICC engine, which supports customers using legacy multi-protocol interfaces, says the company.

• Renesas Technology has announced the availability of the Renesas Multimedia Solution Linux platform, supporting development of systems incorporating the SH772x series application processor for multimedia applications such as audio and video for portable and industrial devices.

• The Timesys LinuxLink software development framework gives Au1250 and Au1300 processor users access to a competitively priced, intuitive environment for developing a wide range of Linux-based media and navigation products.

Phones

• The Nokia N900 is Nokia’s first smartphone possessing a Desktop operating system. It is using the Maemo 5 Linux based operating system. With the Nokia N900’s powerful features such as ARM Cortex-A8 processor, up to 1GB of application memory and OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics acceleration, it allows you to deal with multiple application windows at the same while being able to get maximum utility from its touch screen, cellular features and QWERTY keyboard.

Android

• Motorola’s first smartphone running Android 2.0 is now available in the UK.

• Éclair – also known as Android 2.0 – was released to application developers at the end of October, and this month updated to 2.0.1 thanks to the addition of some minor tweaks. But what should you – the user – expect from Google’s latest handset tech?

• Google announced Google Googles yesterday, an application that uses the camera in your Android-powered phone to take a picture, conduct a visual search, then return results. Google admits that it’s very early, but this is extremely intriguing technology and it has the potential to take visual search to a whole new level by combining it with virtual reality to give you results when you have no information whatsoever.

• Wind River isn’t listing prices for its version of Android; that will be volume-dependent, but the company has a history of selling embedded Linux so knows what devices manufacturers will pay for. Wind River will be offering their own widget pack and user-interface layers, along with optimisation for TI’s OMAP processors.

• The T-Mobile myTouch 3G is the latest Android phone available on T-Mobile. It uses the popular open-source Android operating system, which now offers more than 10,000 applications.

Sub-notebooks

• The netbook promises convenience and capability in a small, lightweight, and generally inexpensive package, and the concept of a smartbook goes even further: a handy-dandy combination of smartphone and notebook. Alas, most netbook offerings come burdened with a full-blown Windows operating system, which runs slowly on performance-limited netbook hardware and saps battery life. And Windows is not exactly smartphone-oriented.

• Sugar OS is the custom Linux user interface designed for the OLPC XO Laptop. Sugar on a Stick is a project that lets you run Sugar from a USB flash drive, no XO laptop required. I first checked out Sugar on a Stick earlier this year, when it was still a bit rough around the edges. But at the Netbook World Summit in Paris today, Sugar Labs CEO Walter Bender introduces Sugar on a Stick version 2.0.

Free Software/Open Source

• In addition to cloud computing and open-source software, other technologies that will be hot in the U.S. government through 2014 include virtualization, service-oriented architecture and geospatial technologies, said Input, an analysis and consulting firm focused on government contracting.

• Open source software (OSS) is most commonly known as “free” software. However, this does not mean “no cost” but rather “freedom of speech.” OSS is software with a special license that allows users to shape and change it as needed.

• OSS grants users the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve the program by way of four essential freedoms. These include the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to study how the program works and change it as needed through access to the source code, to redistribute copies to benefit others, and finally the freedom to improve the program and release the modified versions to the public.

• John Palmisano of the Society of Robots writes with news of the Axon II microcontroller, and a matching software library designed specifically for robotics. The board is about 2.5 inches square (even though it looks 12 stories tall in the animated 3D tour above!)

• [...]

• The WebbotLib software library is written in C and licensed under the GNU GPL.

• Open-source software pioneer Brian Behlendorf, who sports a ponytail and organized an online music site called SFRaves, is the unlikely architect of a new technology being embraced by the U.S. Defense Dept.

• The DOD has started using technology from CollabNet, a Brisbane, Calif., company that Behlendorf co-founded with Bill Portelli, another open-source veteran, to provide an online meeting place in the Internet “cloud” for U.S. military agencies to build software through “crowdsourcing”.

• Open source software has been gaining traction as a means to provide cost-effective, flexible, scalable, adaptable and obsolescence-resistant solutions based on code accessible to developers. Lately open source has been enjoined by open platforms and service-oriented architecture aimed at achieving similar results in particular for demanding contact center applications.

• Open-source EtherNet/IP communication stack developed by the Vienna University of Technology cost effectively connects I/O devices.

• Opengear (www.opengear.com) today announced that the Tatts Group, a global provider of highly secure technical systems and networks for electronic gaming machines, has acquired more than 12,000 Opengear SD4000 series device servers.

• Boxee has been a favorite among tech tinkerers, who liked using the free open-source software to turn a computer into a powerful set-top box for the TV.

• First in regards to Open Cloud Services, basically the concept goes like this; as we move away from the traditional client/server based models of the past to more web centric / service oriented opportunities of the future, we will see open source shift from application centric (source code) toward free open services and information. Cloud providers will essentially give away access in return for greater adopt of their platforms / services, increased customer acquisition and to accelerated creation of data and information. Basically the same reasons companies open source their applications today, just applied in a cloud context.

• DPCI, an interactive technology agency which delivers integrated content management solutions, has agreed to assist eDoorways in converting the company’s Internet platform to Drupal, an Open Source Content Management System written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License.

• It’s amazing that this type of misunderstanding of the world of open-source software still exists, but obviously it still does. The flawed logic seems to be that low cost must mean low quality, and since open-source software solutions are often low cost, the conclusion is they can’t be any good. One obvious way forward is for open-source software makers to simply up the prices of their subscriptions: Their software and the entire open-source development process would presumably then become mysteriously “better.”

Databases

• I will now share with you a small section of the Monty Program AB’s submission to the EU Commission, including its suggestion to replace the GPL with a more proprietary-friendly license, specifically the Apache license.

Licensing

• Even analysis of the GNU General Public License (GPL) is not the hard part. My actual experience with that license has been that the kinds of issues that have engaged (and entertained) lawyers (such as myself) through innumerable hours of legal discourse represent a small fraction of actual cases. In the main volume of GPL-related activity, attention is on the basics–like actually making the GPL-licensed source code available and otherwise getting the details right.

FSF/FSFE/GNU

• A month of the Hurd: initial work on network device drivers in user space, GRUB 2.

• The FSF is putting together a “Community Team” of supporters to spread the free software philosophy in blogs, online press, and through social networking sites.

Releases

• This release includes several bugfixes.

Government

• Within the last decade, more than 60 countries and international organizations have developed nearly 275 policy documents related with the use of Open Source in public sector. The rationale behind most of these policy initiatives is the improvement of governance through transparent and effective use of information technology budgets in public sector, as well as economic/engineering benefits of reusable open source software. A majority of these open source initiatives (~70%) have been accepted and final actions have been taken by mid 2008. Suitable business models have been developed to implement these policies and successful public sector solutions based on open source software have emerged.

• While many U.S. agencies have been using open-source software for years, the new emphasis on tightening budgets will make open-source packages more popular, Peterson predicted. In addition, many agencies will look for increased ways to customize their software using open-source packages, and some agencies will use open-source software to create private, or hybrid, clouds using open source, she said.

Openness

• Riversimple’s design will be open source, with information shared through the website of the 40 Fires Foundation, so that they can continually improve the vehicle and encourage uptake of the technology.

Programming

• I was alerted to this forthcoming news with an invite to a teleconference, which will encompass not only Java EE 6, but also GlassFish v3 and NetBeans 6.8. GlassFish Enterprise Server is Sun’s open source application server “project”, which has an accompanying commercial version known as Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server. Whether Thursday’s announcement will centre of the commercial end remains to be seen.

Leftovers

• Who needs anonymous sources when the government is perfectly capable of leaking its own secrets?

• Government workers preparing the release of a Transportation Security Administration manual that details airport screening procedures badly bungled their redaction of the .pdf file. Result: The full text of a document considered “sensitive security information” was inadvertently leaked.

• The UK Border Agency is paying out £295,000 in bonuses to senior staff despite its ongoing struggle with a backlog of thousands of mystery cases.

• The Home Affairs Committee’s latest report into the UKBA found that although it has worked through about half of its 450,000 backlog, it still does not expect to finish until summer 2011.

• A Chinese woman arrested in Japan had surgery on her fingers to fool biometric border checks when entering the country.

• The 27-year old woman, Lin Ring, who was deported from Japan in 2007, paid for surgery to remove and switch the fingerprints from her left to right hands, and presumably vice versa. Japan uses fingerprint scanners to check travellers entering the country.

• The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is going after a single mother with two kids who makes $10 an hour at Supercuts. When she asked why she was being audited, the IRS told her: “You made eighteen thousand, and our data show a family of three needs at least thirty-six thousand to get by in Seattle.”

Internet/Censorship/Web Abuse/Rights

• And if so, does this constitute a national security risk? I am just asking because even in private sector operations often passionate citizens approach us with concerns when we use Google Analytics. I am curious if the European Data Protection Supervisor website also uses Google Analytics…

• I wonder how a public authority can make a company use the traffic information of its visitors for commercial analysis purposes. So in other words, a European Union body allows a company from a third nation to record traffic data, to spy on the use of its government websites and hand it out to third nation authorities.

• If you’re concerned about Google retaining your personal data, then you must be doing something you shouldn’t be doing. At least that’s the word from Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

• Want to know how much phone companies and internet service providers charge to funnel your private communications or records to U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies?

• That’s the question muckraker and Indiana University graduate student Christopher Soghoian asked all agencies within the Department of Justice, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed a few months ago. But before the agencies could provide the data, Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that, among other things, they would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public.

• A couple of days ago Frog Eyes frontman/Swan Lake member Carey Mercer sent us a link to an article in the Edmonton Journal that discussed a clause in the contracts signed by performers at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics that barred them from speaking negatively about the Games or the Olympic organizing committee.

• Along the way, the court rejected public policy arguments in support of the plaintiffs’ claims for ECPA protection. It rejected as well the contention that the ECPA applied because the electronic communications disclosed by Yahoo! China “may” have traveled through Yahoo!’s domestic network. Prior cases under the Wiretap Act, Stowe v. Devoy, 588 F.2d 336 (2d Cir. 1978), for example, have ruled that cross-border phone calls intercepted in Canada were not subject to the Wiretap Act.

• Normally, I would just call Godwin’s Law, and move on, but this is just beyond bizarre. Automatically assuming that all new high tech is a straight line from the Holocaust is just sickening and delusional beyond pretty much any level of standard luddism.

Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

• They’re now sending out these letters at a massive rate, and while they’re not actually filing lawsuits, it appears that at least one of the firms involved, DigiProtect, is getting a collections agency involved in some cases. That seems pretty nasty. There’s no actual debt here, because the person has not agreed to pay up, but by handing it over to a collections agency, the person will now get hounded with demands for payment. It’s difficult to see how this is even close to legal.

• In some cases, those rights are still held by independent music publishers — and there was a fair amount of confusion over who owned what. It was a perfect example of how ridiculous copyright law is today that even in setting up a big music operation from a major company with the major record labels, no one was exactly sure if all the proper rights were secured.

• Music industry group IFPI has today submitted a request to the Stockholm District Court to force an ISP to hand over the personal details of an alleged file-sharer. The action marks the first time a request has been made by the organization under the IPRED legislation introduced in April.

• Between $50 million and $6 billion may be owed to musicians and artists in Canada, but not from your run-of-the-mill file sharers. The Canadian recording industry itself is being accused of massive copyright infringement, and the list of miffed artists just keeps getting longer.

• A federal judge has made it official: P2P file-swapper Joel Tenenbaum is on the hook for $675,000. The real tragedy here, though, is what might have been, as the judge admits she was receptive to all kinds of limited fair use claims and again slams the record industry’s lawsuit campaign.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the DayStormy Peters, HP open source strategist 02 (2004)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

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