● 12.17.09

● Links 17/12/2009: Many Mint Reviews, MySQL Update

Posted in News Roundup at 4:07 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Top five operating systems used to visit PC Pro on 15 December:

• 1. Windows XP 46.6%

• 2. Windows 7 14.5%

• 3. Windows Vista 13.7%

• 4. Mac OS X 9.1%

• 5. Linux 7.2%

Events

• Even though the call for papers deadline doesn’t end until December 24, 2010, organizers for the 8th annual Southern California Linux Expo have announced a partial list of presenters for the February, 2010, event. Although more slots will be filled in the coming week, a variety of experts in the FOSS industry are already slated to be on hand to talk about everything from the KDE4 desktop environment to what’s happening with the development of mobile open source platform Moblin.

• The schedule for Camp KDE 2010 has just been published! The event will be taking place in sunny San Diego at the University of California, San Diego from January 15th-22nd, 2010. Registration is free and there are still some space left for attendees so sign up right away if you’re interested in attending.

Desktop

• I’ve convinced a few people to use Linux and most of them don’t hate me, but most of them were masochistic geeks who were probably going to use Linux anyway. But there are three people who are pretty important to me who are now using Linux because of me, but who otherwise would not likely have ever used Linux, and who are not masochistic geeks. The whole idea of Linux being “grandmother ready” now takes on new meaning for me.

• Then came Exhibit B — specifically, predictions out of the recent Netbook World Summit in Paris that Linux will dominate in ARM-powered laptops next year. Furthermore, such machines are expected to take over a significant share of the overall laptop market.

• Not even the strongest eggnog can beat declarations like that for lifting a Linux geek’s spirits!

• I was doing Win-Lin dual boot for some time. By reading various stuff, I got to know that there are many distributions. I’ve used Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Mandriva, Puppy, Knoppix and PCLinuxOS 2007. But none of them were able to suit me like Ubuntu did. I know, it’s psychology,… the first impression with the meaning of the word “Ubuntu” — humanity; it simply didn’t let me run away.

• An anonymous reader said a Best Buy manager refused to replace his broken laptop and threw him out of the store twice when he tried to argue. The reader had even gone so far as to purchase an $80 extended warranty. He writes:

• I have read a rather sad story today. Apparently the Best Buy Geeks squad refused to service the machine of someone who had purchased an $80 extended warranty for its netbook just because he had installed Ubuntu Linux. This story not only shows how best Best Buy’s Geeks squad is far from having anything even close to the technical knowledge of a geek, but also raises 2 other questions: are extended warranties worth it, and are Linux consumers correctly protected in the US? Let’s dig into these two rather important questions.

Server

• Entirely made in Japan, the OpenBlockS600 may not feature the most exciting design ever made to mankind, but who would argue that design for this kind of a product is important? After all, what we want and need here is something extremely reliable, easy to handle and rock solid… And believe me, the OpenBlockS600 is ALL of those in one tiny white aluminum box.

• Desktop virtualization is one of those technologies that confound the experts. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, along comes some interloping development to upset the apple cart. Most recently, that role has fallen to Sun’s VirtualBox, the plucky open source VM solution that’s quickly gobbling up the general-purpose desktop virtualization space left vacant by Microsoft and VMware. Users from the three major platforms — Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux — are flocking to VirtualBox for its scalability, robust networking, and bargain price point (it’s free).

Kernel Space

• There are plenty of changes with ALSA 1.0.22 but among them are continued work on the CMI8788 Oxygen APU, a few fixes for the Creative X-Fi sound card support that was introduced this year, numerous improvements to the HDA and HDA Intel drivers, and countless improvements to other Linux kernel audio drivers and codecs.

Graphics Stack

• We still may see power management patches for the ATI kernel driver arrive in time for 2.6.33, but being called for a pull into the mainline kernel this morning is the long-awaited HDMI audio support for the ATI kernel mode-setting driver. HDMI audio support for ATI Radeon graphics cards used to be the unique advantage for the RadeonHD driver, but it’s been ported to the DRM driver and will be supported under Linux 2.6.33.

• Since last week the DRM code for the Nouveau driver has been in the mainline kernel code-base for its official debut with the Linux 2.6.33 kernel.

• This in-kernel power management code is working with more (older) Radeon graphics processors and offers various other improvements compared to earlier revisions.

Applications

• Printing in Linux, even in this glorious year 2009–almost 2010–of the new millennium, the 21st century, is still fraught with vexations. I have always liked CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System. Once you figure out your way around it, it is powerful and network-friendly, even to allowing remote printing over the Internet. Which I think is better than faxing, at least when you’re dealing with trusted senders and recipients. Linux PCs will find networked CUPS printers automatically, and now CUPS support automatic driver downloads for Windows clients. Though networking CUPS printers with Windows still requires a bit of fiddling, thanks to Windows’ inability to handle ordinary simple networking sanely.

• For those who have yet to hear of Gloobus Preview it is essentially a “file peeker”; allows you to preview pretty much any file by selecting a file then tapping the space key on your keyboard – an elegant window pops up instantly showing you the contents of the selected file.

Multimedia

• Here’s some screenshots taken from my XBMC setup. Mainly films because I need to sort out the library feature for TV and Music.

• I’ve been rediscovering Rhythmbox and its features. I know I haven’t really given it much chance before as Listen was more lightweight and it pretty much worked well with my netbook. So now that I’m using my old laptop for work more often, I decided to mainly use the default apps on Ubuntu Karmic Koala.

• YouTube is a great service but its cluttered user interface leaves a lot to be desired. Minitube is a solid open source YouTube viewing client that gives users a way to search and watch videos without all the visual distractions.

Instructionals

Games

• Well, not really a million, but how about tens or hundreds? Good enough for you?

• Today, we will talk about two extremely useful applications that allow to you search for hundreds of games that run on Linux, sorted by category, popularity, license, or price, read game synopses, check out the screenshots, and then, should you decide that you like some of them, install them with a single mouse click.

• This tutorial series shows you how to use some of the features of Irrlicht, which is a free, powerful and cross platform C++ 3D engine. If you just want to see Irrlicht in action, all of these demos have been combined into one application. You can download the Linux version, complete with source code, here.

• Irukandji GNU/Linux port was recently released by Charlie Games. Irukandji is a score underwater shooter with flashy graphics, many enemies, bosses, weapons, ships, challenges and much more !

Desktop Environments

GNOME

• Split-panel nautilus tweaks/hacks are incredibly popular but up until now the feature remained a 3rd party enablement.

• With the upcoming GNOME Shell raising questions as to the purpose Nautilus due to features Nautilus traditionally provided instead being served-up by the Shell.

KDE

• The KDevelop team is proud to announce the seventh beta of KDevelop4. At the same time we’re a bit sad as this beta also marks our drop-out of the KDE SC 4.4 release cycle. We feel that we didn’t manage to get the needed features for the 4.4.0 release working properly and that we’ll need a longer freeze period than what is available in the release cycle. We’re now concentrating on getting the existing features shaped up and ready for release as well as fixing as many of the bugs as we can. No new features will be introduced into KDevelop anymore until the first release, which is currently aimed at end of March.

Distributions

• You can measure Linux’s history in many ways. We usually think of it in terms of releases. The Linux kernel got its start in September 1991 with version 0.01. The kernel turned 18 this fall with the release of 2.6.something-or-other. But, another way of looking at Linux is in terms of its important distributions.

• For users, these distributions have been the mountain tops. Each of the truly significant distributions changed how Linux was seen, and brought the operating system new and different groups of users. You can argue about which distro is more important than another, but, all the distributions in my list changed how we saw and used Linux.

• I made this list by both looking at Linux’s history, and from my own experiences at the time with Linux. While I wasn’t a Linux user in its very early years — I was working with the commercial Unix and the BSD operating systems — I did come on-board quickly.

• In the end, Slackware continues to grab the latest software and it continues to be the distro that leaves a lot of the decision-making to the user. I have not yet tried Arch Linux, but I intend to try it soon. It seems to be a distro trying to take the crown for most customization away from Slackware and Gentoo.

• My reply:

Ubuntu

• I admire how Mark Shuttleworth is investing his time, money and efforts into Ubuntu, but one man can not be everywhere. Even adding in all of his team I don’t think they can have the same effect as a media campaign which is visually based.

• From March next year, I’ll focus my Canonical energy on product design, partnerships and customers. Those are the areas that I enjoy most and also the areas where I can best shape the impact we have on open source and the technology market. I’m able to do this because Jane Silber, who has been COO at Canonical virtually from the beginning, will take on the job of CEO.

• Shuttleworth also added that while its work with Google on the Chrome OS isn’t Canonical’s main direction, they’re looking forward to doing more work on Chrome OS. He added that Ubuntu is looking forward to gaining more of the desktop market with its own Ubuntu offering “right under Windows 7′s nose.”

• Earlier today, I had to go to IT Square in Laksi to do some banking. Knowing what a geek that I am, and since there are ten branches closer than the IT Square one, you’d be forgiven for assuming that I went to bank there as an excuse for computer shopping, but you’d be wrong. I was required to go to that specific branch. After the baning, though, my gf and I walked around a little.

• She was checking out laptop bags, and my attention went to the Acer display just outside the bag store. To my shock, there was a low-end laptop (about USD400) with a localized version of Ubuntu on the computer. There was a special Acer desktop background, and the menus were in Thai. The next computer had the same system. Hmmm. The specs described the computer as having Linpus Linux installed (pictured above), but the system was definitely Ubuntu. There were about twelve models on display, but some of them weren’t on.

• Pixbyte Development SL today announced that DVD Ranger will be available for Ubuntu users, thus expanding the range of functionality. Starting today, if you want to burn DVD on Ubuntu, you can enjoy the best video quality using our DVD Ranger.

• In April the Ubuntu developers will release Lucid Lynx, the next version of the popular Linux operating system. Also known as Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx will be the third long term support (LTS) release from Ubuntu and is likely to have a strong focus on stability and security and will be geared at appealing to enterprise users and hardware makers. Ubuntu releases new versions every six months with LTS releases supported for five years on servers and three years on desktops.

• There he is, kid #4: his t-shirt says it all. By way of disclosure, I got that t-shirt for free from the good folks at Canonical. I don’t, however, think he will end up using Ubuntu because they gave me a free t-shirt. I think he’ll use Ubuntu because he already does. I also think that Ubuntu use will continue to spread beyond the kids of the sorts of people to whom Canonical sends t-shirts. Ubuntu is not just for geeks anymore.

• Canonical has revealed plans to bring social networking integration and GNOME panel improvements in the next major version of Ubuntu. Notification area icons will be replaced by a new application indicator system. The panel will also feature a new Me Menu for setting messaging status.

Mint

• Here’s a walk through of the Linux Mint 8 Helena. You’ll notice a ton of similarities between the installation process of Linux Mint 8 and the base it’s built from Ubuntu.

• Product: Linux Mint 8 Web Site: http://www.linuxmint.com/ Price: Free Pros: Software Manager & Update Manager upgrades, configurable places, Upload Manager & File Uploader added. Cons: Slightly less attractive default wallpaper, no bundled games, Chrome browser not available in software repositories. Suitable For: Beginner, intermediate or advanced desktop Linux users. Summary: Linux Mint 8 brings Linux Mint up to speed with Ubuntu 9.10 and adds some custom upgrades of its own. An excellent desktop distribution that any Linux user should consider using. Rating: 4/5

• Having seen what the open source community can do to improve and support a product, I have to say I’m extremely impressed with the work they’ve done. Just last week I stated that I would probably run a dual boot with Windows 7 as my primary system and Mint or Ubuntu as my secondary system. Well, after installing and using Helena, I have to say I’m strongly considering sticking with Mint and possibly having Windows 7 as a secondary OS for compatibility issues. I can definitely say that I wasn’t expecting a free operating system to work as well as this one does. Bravo.

• I also like the additional utilities, the so-called MEPIS Assistant programs. These take what can sometimes be complicated tasks on other Linux distributions, such as networking and X-Windows set-up, and make them simple. Last, but not least, MEPIS has always done an outstanding job of using the KDE 3.5x to good effect. In the upcoming MEPIS 8.5, he’s using the brand-new KDE 4.3.4 for those who like the KDE 4.x series. But, for those who are still fond of KDE 3.5, and while I finally warmed up to KDE 4.x I also continue to like KDE 3.5x, he’ll continue to support it in the MEPIS 8.x line.

Devices/Embedded

• A network drive serves two main purposes. One, it is a place to store your files – plain and simple. When you are maxed out on space on your PC, a network drive affords the extensive storage required for advanced computing work, media files and backups. The second main purpose: enhancing your digital life. More than just a network drive, the Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive – which is about the size of a male hand and styled with an unassuming black enclosure – provides a wealth of powerful and unusual digital media features, many of which work quite well with Linux computers.

• Thailand-based NorhTec announced a device touted as “the world’s most energy-efficient desktop computer,” offered for only $99 with the Linux version. Built into a standard-sized keyboard, the “Gecko Surfboard” runs on a 1GHz x86 SoC (system on chip), operates fanlessly, and uses just five Watts, the company says.

• E-con bundles the e-CAM32 OMAP Gstix with a Linux support package that offers Linux camera drivers with full source code. The drivers include support for V4L2 (Video for Linux 2) buffer management interface, as well as close integration with TI’s IVA 2.2 (Image, Video and Audio Subsystem) accelerator subsystem on the OMAP35x SoCs.

• Lanner announced a Linux-ready network appliance that sports up to 8GB of RAM and seven Ethernet ports. Featuring LAN bypass on two of its ports, the FW-7580 supports a variety of Intel CPUs, has a 40-character front panel display, and offers both hard disk and CompactFlash storage, the company says.

Phones

• The Linux-based device builds on from Nokia’s N810 Internet Tablet, with a 3.4-inch 800×480 touch screen, 32GB of storage and a slide-out Qwerty keyboard.

Android

• The Milestone marks another step forward in Motorola’s renaissance. It’s a joy to use, thanks to its sensitive screen and decent, if not the very best, Qwerty keyboard. The tweaks to the Android OS are welcome, if not exactly ground-breaking and though the camera could have been a bit better, and we’re bewildered by the decision to omit Motoblur, it’s a top quality smartphone with satnav.

• Motorola tugged at the hearts of science-fiction fans everywhere when it announced that its first smartphone using Google’s Android software would be called Droid, the name given to the lovable robots in “Star Wars.”

• Google will continue to promote its Android OS, which is used by HTC, Samsung and Motorola, with Sony-Ericsson, Acer, and LG Electronics announcing Android-powered phones.

Free Software/Open Source

• Alfresco Chief Marketing Officer Ian Howells is talking up a new cloud relationship with RightScale. But that’s not all. More than 1,000 customers now pay for Alfresco’s open source content management system. Next, Howells expects a winner-take-all scenario in the open source market. Should VARs care? You bet. Here’s why.

• A major release of the Linux kernel happens every three months, which means this year has seen four new versions. Of course, not all of these will see major circulation as most distros only release every six months. Typically every second or third release makes it into the major distributions. Version 2.6.32 was released just two weeks ago, but it won’t actually make it to most distros. Nevertheless, most of the major features do make it onto the desktop, eventually.

• This past year has seen some amazing new work enter the kernel. Perhaps the most work centered around file systems with the introduction of Btrfs, SquashFS, FUSE, EXOFS and NILFS2 into mainline. For the majority of distributions, the new Ext4 file system has become the default (although it was not without its problems).

• Graphics architecture was re-worked which caused no end of issues for most machines with an Intel graphics card. Kernel-based mode setting (KMS) was introduced including support for Intel and Radeon cards. With 2.6.33 on the way the Nouveau driver for NVIDIA cards has just been merged into the mainline staging tree. Linux was also the first kernel to gain support for USB 3.0, although there are no consumer devices widely available yet.

• As you may know, Open-Xchange is an open source email system. The company claims 2009 was a banner year; more than 15 million people worldwide are running Open-Xchange, an 80 percent increase from 2008.

Mozilla

• One of Ubuntu’s most useful but rarely discussed features is one-click installation of a variety of popular webapps via Mozilla’s Prism. Here’s a look at what Prism can do in Ubuntu, with some thoughts on why Canonical should work harder to push features like this.

Sun/Databases

• A nagging question has been hanging over Oracle’s long-delayed acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Is Sun still relevant after seeing its once powerful market position slowly but steadily eroded over the past decade? This question rose to prominence back in April, when the database giant first announced its plans to buy out Sun. It’s become a critical issue as Sun has continued to hemorrhage cash as Oracle has faced delay after delay in getting regulatory approval of the deal in Europe. But there are still a lot of factors that demonstrate how Sun’s products and technology remain relevant and in demand in the IT industry. This eWEEK slide show illustrates why Sun still has a strong market influence.

• European regulators have given Oracle the tentative green light in its long-delayed merger with Sun Microsystems now that Oracle has assuaged concerns about the stewardship of the open source MySQL database.

• It’s not officially a done deal, but eWEEK has learned through knowledgeable sources that the standoff between Oracle and the antitrust regulators of the European Commission has been broken and that an agreement is probably imminent.

• Oracle’s complicated eight-month-long mission to annex Sun Microsystems is finally coming to an end.

• It’s not officially a done deal, but eWEEK has learned through knowledgeable sources that the standoff between Oracle and the antitrust regulators of the European Commission has been broken and that an agreement is probably imminent.

• Nexedi, the creator of ERP5, one of the most advanced Open Source ERPs used for mission critical applications in Europe, Africa and Japan in Aerospace, Central Banking, Financial Services, Chemical, Government, Health and Transportation industries has published today a position letter sent to the European Commission in the context of the recent acquisition of Sun Microsytems by Oracle Corporation. Nexedi recommends to the European Commission that Oracle should be requested to sell the MySQL Business Unit to a third party which offers reasonable guarantees for its Business development. Nexedi offers to takeover MySQL Business Unit for 1 Euro and relieve Oracle from what has become a negative asset in its merger and acquisition strategy.

CMS

• Drupal 6.15 and 5.21, maintenance releases which fix issues reported through the bug tracking system, as well as non critical security vulnerabilities, are now available for download. Both releases fix other smaller issues as well.

• Yesterday, an anti-Drupal ad by Microsoft was spotted in the wild; see the image on the right. The news spread on Twitter like wildfire. I said this was “interesting”, not because Microsoft isn’t allowed to compete with Drupal but because Microsoft is also promoting Drupal. In fact, I was flattered by the idea that Microsoft considered Drupal worthy of competition. However, it left many of us confused about the fact that Microsoft decided to both partner with Drupal and compete against it.

BSD

• Recently, the FreeNAS developers have released version 0.7 of their FreeBSD-based operating system for network-attached storage (NAS). This is a major release, which introduces support for the ZFS file system among other things. Around the same time, fears were expressed about the future of FreeNAS as a BSD-based NAS but, in the end, a solution has been found.

• BSDTalk has a 12 minute interview with Josh Paetzel, IT director at iXsystems. Will and Josh talk about the recent takeover of the FreeNAS project by iXsystems.

FSF/FSFE/GNU

• The card can load an incredibly fast Trisquel Live environment that will keep your settings and files from one run to the next. And you can also use it as a normal USB disk, which comes with a set of free software related texts, audio and video files. A wonderful advocacy tool.

Openness

• Self serving, incestuous cliques are not unique to proprietary software or big science. Spats in open source projects are known but unlike the CRU or the IPCC, the data and code is free and open and no exclusive, corrupt peer review process can long hide facts. This article has only touched the tip of the iceberg (no pun intended). This matter is properly the subject of whole books and websites. My intention has been to see what is wrong with the process from the perspective of the culture and practice of open source methodology. I suspect though, that matters have degenerated so far that the best practice of free software geeks would not have saved the CRU from itself. What a mess. What a bloody mess.

Standards/Consortia

• But what’s to be done about it? In an effort to support open-source graphics programs and foster a wider understanding of, and engagement with, color, there’s a nascent movement underway to develop what we call, with refreshing lack of originality, an Open Color Standard.

Leftovers

• Cheques will be phased out by October 2018, but only if adequate alternatives are developed, the body that oversees payments strategy has said.

Security/Pseudo-Security

• The House of Representatives tabled on Wednesday legislation to reform U.S. surveillance law. The two-month delay puts off a collision with a competing Senate version.

• Millions of user passwords to social networking sites have been exposed, after a serious SQL injection flaw on the Rockyou.com website left login details – stored in plain text – up for grabs.

• Admitted TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez has identified two Russian accomplices who helped him hack into numerous companies and steal more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers.

• Do Minnesota Public Radio and reporter Sasha Aslanian realistically face civil and criminal penalties after uncovering a Texas firm’s security breaches involving state of Minnesota job-seeker data?

• The malware slingers were sentenced to up to three years behind bars and fined a total of $120,000. More prosecutions are pending against other alleged gang members, IDG reports

• Adobe Systems plans to release a patch for a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat that has come under attack. This is the second critical security vulnerability Adobe has promised users it will fix in the coming weeks.

Environment

• Greenland holds the equivalent of 7m of global sea-level rise in its ice sheet, so its future evolution is a subject of considerable interest to researchers.

• Treehugger photographer Matt McDermott happened to be in the right place when the massive climate demonstrations in Copenhagen broke out, and the site has a great gallery of shots of the action.

• Every delegate to the Copenhagen summit is being greeted by the sight of a vast fake planet dominating the city’s central square. This swirling globe is covered with corporate logos – the Coke brand is stamped over Africa, while Carlsberg appears to own Asia, and McDonald’s announces “I’m loving it!” in great red letters above. “Welcome to Hopenhagen!” it cries. It is kept in the sky by endless blasts of hot air.

• Weaning humanity from its fossil fuel habit will take decades, and it will take decades more for global warming to stop. But one simple measure could slow warming in some of Earth’s most sensitive regions, effective immediately — and it would cost just $15 billion.

Finance

• “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street,” President Obama told “60 Minutes” onSunday, the eve of White House meeting with top Wall Street bankers. This line, and the credulous media coverage that followed, fed the image of Obama as the people’s crusader against the wealthy special interests.

• But if you skip the rhetoric and focus instead on verifiable facts — campaign contributions, administration appointees, White House visitor logs, Obama’s bailouts and even his proposed regulations — you see instead that Obama may be closer to Wall Street than any modern president.

• No immediate comment was available from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase.

• Both would reinstate the 1930s-era Glass-Steagall laws that barred large banks from affiliating with securities firms and engaging in the insurance business. Those limits were largely repealed in 1999, a high-water mark for deregulation.

• International Brotherhood of Teamsters President James Hoffa said Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is creating derivatives trades that would benefit from the bankruptcy of YRC Worldwide Inc., the trucking company trying to avert failure with a debt exchange.

• Goldman Sachs Group Inc. should be probed for its role in the subprime mortgage crisis, according to letters sent to 10 state attorneys general by a labor union that represents 150,000 people in the U.S. and Canada.

• Workers United sent the letters this week urging officials to follow the example of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. In May, Goldman Sachs agreed to a $60 million settlement to end an investigation by Coakley’s office into how the New York-based bank packaged securities containing home loans made to Massachusetts residents.

• The union, whose members include janitors and security guards, has no specific grievance on behalf of any Goldman employee.

• Rather, the SEIU, part of a coalition, Americans for Financial Reform, which is set to demonstrate in front of Goldman’s headquarters today, says it is merely standing up for millions of working class people.

• “They are literally stealing a hundred million dollars a day. Goldman Sachs is stealing every day on the floor of the exchange. They should be in the Hague, they should be taken on financial terrorism charges. They should all be thrown in jail”

• Even so, many Goldman employees are stunned by the public resentment directed at the bank in general and Mr. Blankfein in particular, who, after first steadfastly defending Goldman’s profits and pay, recently offered a vague apology for “mistakes” that led to the financial crisis.

• Last month, however, he got a bit carried away, telling a Times of London reporter that he was just a banker “doing God’s work.” For $43 million a year.

• The Washington Post says the U.S. Government gave up billions in tax money when it agreed to let Citigroup (C) out of the TARP program this week. “The Internal Revenue Service on Friday issued an exception to long-standing tax rules for the benefit of Citigroup and a few other companies partially owned by the government. As a result, Citigroup will be allowed to retain billions of dollars worth of tax breaks that otherwise would decline in value when the government sells its stake to private investors.” A Treasury source paints the decision to let Citigroup keep the tax exemption as a Catch-22. If the government hadn’t granted the break, Citigroup might not have been able to raise the money to exit TARP and foot its tax bill. “Either the government changed the rules and parted ways with Citigroup or the company kept the government as a shareholder and kept the tax break anyway.”

• December has been tough for the global banking elite. First Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, slapped a 50% tax on bonuses paid to bankers. Then, days later, President Barack Obama chided “fat-cat bankers” on national television in the U.S. On Dec. 14, Wall Street began cranking up its PR machine to contain the damage, sending U.S. Bancorp (USB) CEO Richard Davis—a lesser-known, lesser-paid member of its ranks—to address reporters in Washington. America’s top bankers, he said, “agreed very much” with the President “on the principles of executive compensation,” adding that they “are looking forward to you seeing the good efforts we’ve taken in the last couple of months.”

• But a close look at Goldman Sachs’ (GS) recent maneuvers shows that some of the changes in pay practices on Wall Street are more stylistic than substantive.

Internet/Censorship/Web Abuse/Rights

• My new garage door opener comes with both DRM and a DMCA warning: don’t even think about using a third-party remote. But didn’t a federal court already say this sort of behavior was illegal years ago?

• Move over, Facebook. Now Google is caught in the middle of Italy’s epic row over Sunday’s violent assault on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

• Bloggers, netizens, and at least one news organization are claiming that the web giant has removed images of a bloodied Berlusconi from the Italian incarnation of Google Image search. On Wednesday afternoon, a blog post from Google Italia said it had not removed the pics, pointing out that it takes time for newer content to appear on Image Search, but many continue to insist that the photos appeared on the site earlier in the week.

• Former South Dakota State Rep. Ted Alvin Klaudt — presently serving time for raping his two foster daughters — is sending bizarre “copyright notices” from prison to news agencies and outlets that use his name in print or online, claiming a “common law copyright” on his name and demanding $500,000 for any unauthorized use.

• The North Face Apparel Corp. has sued the South Butt LLC, seeking to put a stop to University of Missouri college freshman Jimmy Winkelmann’s parody clothing line.

• The FCC’s hiring this week of Stuart Benjamin, a telecommunications law professor on leave from Duke University, as a “distinguished scholar in residence” drew sharp criticism Friday from the Parents Television Council, which claims that he’s called for long-standing broadcast indecency law to be found unconstitutional, CongressDaily reported.

• A journalist who wrote for the Summit Daily News claims he was fired because his publisher was concerned about losing advertising dollars after he wrote a column that was critical of how ski resorts report their daily snow totals.

• Bob Berwyn has more than a decade reporting the news in Colorado’s high country. He was terminated at the Daily News five days after the column was published.

• It looks like the Australian blogosphere and twitterverse are in an uproar, and the media have not been very kind. What remains to be seen is how much this issue can crossover into the mainstream public consciousness. If the policy is seen as a vote-loser rather than a crowd pleaser, the Government might be a little readier to see reason.

• So is Australia the new Iran? Should you encrypt your hard drive or install a VPN before visiting Australia next year? Well, it’s not the law of the land yet, but unless the political winds change, Australia is set to join a club with some rather unsavoury members.

Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

• The New Zealand government has reintroduced its controversial “three-strikes” Internet law, Bill 92A. Previously defeated after widespread outcry, the new 92A was introduced minutes before Parliament recessed for the holidays, and makes no substantial improvements over the initial proposal. Under the revised proposal, if anyone in your house is accused of three acts of infringement (without any proof of wrongdoing), your entire household loses stands to lose Internet access for six months, and/or pays a NZ$15,000 fine (the previous version of the bill would have taken away your family’s internet for life). The major change in the bill is the opportunity for a counter-notice, if you believe the accusation is false.

• Leaks have emerged from another secret copyright treaty, this one between the EU and Canada. The EU is really screwing Canada with this one, demanding longer copyright terms, more liability for ISPs (which means that it gets harder and more expensive to host anything from a message board to a video), laws against breaking copyright protection (even for a legal purpose, like getting your own files back), and a royalty on the sale of used copyrighted goods (so you’d have to track down and pay the rightsholder when you resold a painting or other copyrighted work).

• The owner of a local record store said he had no choice but to plead guilty Tuesday to a charge of offering for sale 100 CDs that were illegal under Canadian copyright law.

• The Government’s plan to make charities pay royalties to play music will apply to each charity shop individually and could cost charities that run shops a total of more than £500,000 a year, according to the Association of Charity Shops.

• A report published last week in the Toronto Star by Professor Michael Geist of Canada’s University of Ottawa claims a copyright case under the Class Proceedings Act of 1992 may see the country’s largest players in the music industry facing upwards of C$6 billion in penalties.

• The case is being led by the family and estate of the late jazz musician Chet Baker; moving to take legal action against four major labels in the country, and their parent companies. The dispute centres around unpaid royalties and licensing fees for use of Baker’s music, and hundreds of thousands of other works. The suit was initially filed in August last year, but amended and reissued on October 6, two months later. At that point both the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency (CMRRA) and Society for Reproduction Rights of Authors (SODRAC) were also named defendants.

• The Obama administration announced Tuesday it supports loosening international copyright protections to enable cross-border distribution of special-format reading materials for the blind, a move that puts it at odds with nearly all of U.S. industry.

• The government announced its support for the underlying principle of the WIPO Treaty for Sharing Accessible Formats of Copyrighted Works for Persons Who are Blind or Have other Reading Disabilities. The announcement was made in Geneva (.pdf) before a subcommittee of the the World Intellectual Property Organization, which has about 180 members.

• French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been pushing himself as a defender of copyrights, and even helped create the original three strikes plan in France. And yet, he and his political party keep getting caught infringing on copyrights. First there was the use of a song in some online videos without proper licensing. Then there was the issue with mass pirating DVDs. So you would think that his party would be extra careful when putting together yet another online video involving music. Apparently not.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the DayJoerg Heilig, Sun Microsystems Senior Engineering Director talks about OpenOffice.org 01 (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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