● 02.14.10

● Links 14/2/2010: Linux 2.6.33 RC 8, New Android Platform

Posted in News Roundup at 8:44 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Ubuntu: Although it is not my desktop distribution of choice, it is my “go-to” distribution in just about any situation. And the only reason it is not my desktop distribution is because of the next entry.

• Elive: Elive combines my two favorite desktop tools – Enlightenment and Compiz. Without Elive, these two would not work together.

• Debian: It is that which Ubuntu is based. Need I say more?

• OpenSuSE: The YaST tool alone puts this distro in just about any top ten.

• Fedora: I was a long standing Red Hat user so Fedora is a natural for a top ten distribution. And even though Fedora is “bleeding edge”, it’s still rock solid.

• As planned, I did my talk about the thriving fully free GNU/Linux distribution movement at yesterday’s FSFE Berlin Fellowship meeting. I started with the basics of the Free Software ideal, moved on to the problematic issues concerning mainstream GNU/Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Debian and then discussed the solutions to these problems. I also had the chance to share some of my favorite fully free GNU/Linux distributions.

• Userful Corporation, the world leader in multiseat Linux, today announced the release of Userful Multiplier V.3.7, the latest version of their software which turns 1 PC into 10. Demand for its $69 virtual desktops (education pricing, includes the software and multiseat hardware) has accelerated as budget-strapped governments, educational organizations, and businesses turn to Userful to lower costs. The improvements brought with V.3.7 will bring the benefits of Userful’s desktop virtualization to even more users around the world.

Events

• As I do every year, I’ve created a video to highlight the activities and give a taste for the event. It’s not a closed event: I hope you’ll join us in 2011.

• A year has passed and we are happy to announce Linux Conference 2010, which will be held on 27. and 28. September 2010 in Portorož, Slovenia. Once again we have the honor to select best of your submissions / topics in fields of Linux usage in business environment and open source applications. With your help, we will organize leading Slovenian IT Linux and open source event, so we invite you to contact us with your submissions.

• A year has passed and we are happy to announce Linux Conference 2010, which will be held on 27. and 28. September 2010 in Portorož, Slovenia. Once again we have the honor to select best of your submissions / topics in fields of Linux usage in business environment and open source applications.

• LPI-Central Europe will also provide networking service for both LPI alumni and prospective employers. Companies seeking Linux professionals and LPI alumni interested in new employment prospects can connect at the LPI booth in Hall 2, Floor D39 of the Hanover Exhibition and Convention Center, Hanover, Germany.

Desktop

• Accessing your bank account through a computer that isn’t used for anything else—no email or Web surfing—and isn’t connected to the local network offers strong protection, says William Nelson, president of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry group that collects and shares threat data.

• Another option is to use an obscure computer operating system such as Ubuntu or Web browser such as Opera because attackers rarely create malware for them, security experts say.

Server

• The first thing we were concerned with, was what’s out there in terms of technology? As we can see in the figure, the results highlighted the high degree of confidence that traditional enterprise server operating systems hold as high-performance work horses. UNIX, Linux and z/OS are all seen positively for the majority of requirements, high-performance or otherwise.

Dell

• That’s the second purchase this week for Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), which is not normally an acquisitive company. Earlier in the week, it purchased the assets of Exanet, a bankrupt Israeli company that makes Linux-based clustered network-attached storage management software.

• The software is designed for small to mid-sized businesses as well as government, education and health institutions. Its primary software product family is called Kbox and it supports systems that run Windows, Macintosh and Linux software.

Google

• Google’s operating system will use a Linux kernel

• Google Chrome OS will also consider a distribution of Linux, which is based on kernel / kernel of Linux. On this Linux kernel, it will run the windows and web applications from Google Chrome OS. Since Google Chrome an OS kernel using Linux, your video should be released to the public, so everyone who wants can have access to it. Also, Google Chrome OS must also be free, something that surely will encourage many people to use Google’s operating system.

• We are getting more and more news about more industry leading Netbook maker planing on releasing Chrome OS featured NetBook. We might have to wait till end of the year. We already have few specification about some of those NetBook. Google Already Released its code base, still no downloadable iso or burnable disk image, but we already have Chromium OS source code so developer could make their own package, but it’s currently limited to Linux only OS.

• I use Linux as my operating system instead of Windows, specifically Kubuntu (kubuntu.org). Deep down, it is very different from Microsoft’s offering, but in general they run a lot of the same programs. Google’s Chromium browser has been available for some time for Windows, but still is not a stable release for Linux, so I have been waiting to try it out. Finally, I decided it was time. Here are my opinions.

Kernel Space

• I think this is going to be the last -rc of the series, so please do test it out. A number of regressions should be fixed, and while the regression list doesn’t make me _happy_, we didn’t have the kind of nasty things that went on before -rc7 and made me worried.

• Linus has released the 2.6.33-rc8 prepatch. “I think this is going to be the last -rc of the series, so please do test it out. A number of regressions should be fixed, and while the regression list doesn’t make me _happy_, we didn’t have the kind of nasty things that went on before -rc7 and made me worried.”

• For Phoronix Test Suite 2.6 (codenamed “Lyngen”) we have back-ported some of the graphing improvements into the current code-base.

Graphics Stack

• While it’s exciting to have kernel mode-setting, RandR, and EXA / X-Video acceleration for NVIDIA hardware in an open-source driver that is reliable since the mainlining of its DRM code and its adoption in Ubuntu 10.04 and other distributions, Fedora has already employed Nouveau support to various extents in their recent releases.

• That’s Spring. What’s Spring? Well, it’s a fairly neat open source RTS framework that started out as a Total Annihilation clone, but more to the point, it’s a pretty complex 3D game. What’s cool about the picture? Well, it’s in the renderer info in the console (which you probably can’t quite make out, never mind). Yup, that’s Spring…running on Nouveau!

• Keith Packard has just made available the first release candidate of X Server 1.8 and confirms that its release schedule is still on track. Snapshots and the Git code for X Server 1.8 go back to last year, but with a planned release by the end of March, Keith has now started working on release candidates.

Applications

• A document processor is a document preparation system. Unlike a word processor, this type of application leads the author to concentrate on the structure of the document rather than its appearance. The author therefore focuses on what he/she wants to say, instead of fretting over page borders, font attributes, or formatting. Moreover, the author will be guided in the organisation, structure, and flow within the document.

• The software featured in this article all produce high quality professional documents. The majority of them rely on LaTeX as their rendering engine. LaTeX is a distinguished typesetting system which is designed for the production of scientific and technical documentation. It employs beautifully crafted typesetting algorithms. Academic journals will often accept submission in this format.

• Google has announced the availability of version 5.0.307.7 of Chrome for Mac and Linux, the latest betas of its Chrome WebKit-based browser for each platform. According to the developers, Chrome on both platforms features stability improvements to plug-ins, such the Adobe Flash Player, and is now even more reliable.

• OProfile is a very handy, useful tool. In the hands of a smart system administrator, it can be used to detect application slowness problems, analyze system bottlenecks, optimize system performance and utilization, and resolve resource/usage conflicts. Combined with a range of other admin programs, some of which we’ve talked about and others we are yet to see, OProfile is a must-have item on the system debugging checklist.

Wine/Proprietary

• Further, I discovered as I played the game, that it’s fun, and ‘missions’ is a better game metaphore than ‘quests’, in my humble opinion. That is, in World of Warcraft, I always felt like I was a dog, and each quest was an instruction to ‘fetch’. And why on earth does Lieutenant Farren Orinelle need so many Merlock heads? But rescuing a freighter seems like a legitimate thing to do, and if you have to destroy a bunch of Orion ships on the way, well that sort of makes sense as well.

• So I’m hoping that my wife and I can play this game for a while. But in order for that to happen, I’ve got to have a release of CrossOver to use to play it. So I put together an unsupported build, and did some basic testing, trying not to take anything away from our efforts on ‘Snow Mallard’. It runs Company of Heroes more nicely, but seems to cause trouble with Left 4 Dead 1 and 2.

• Fluendo employs several of the central developers of the GStreamer multimedia framework, which is quickly establishing itself as the de-facto standard multimedia framework for GNU/Linux and UNIX systems.

Instructionals

Games

• While there are many open-source games available (just see the recent discussion about the most advanced GPL-ed FPS), most of them are based upon the ioquake3 game engine that in turn is based upon id Software’s open-source id Tech 3 engine. There’s also games like Nexuiz that use the DarkPlaces engine and then also Warsow that uses QFusion. There have also been projects like XreaL that seek to greatly expand upon the visual capabilities of the ioquake3 engine, but many of these projects go on without ever making it to a release stage. Today there is yet another open-source game engine in development.

Desktop Environments

• This question of KDE versus GNOME is something that is so debatable. It is something flame wars are made of. It is a matter of preference, of course. I’ve been using KDE lately and I am seeing some good things about it and some not so good things, at least for me. But I can’t say that it’s a totally useless desktop environment either. It’s pretty good, I think.

K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

• A new version of KChildlock v0.57.1 has been released. KChildlock is a tool to monitor and restrict the time a children spends on the computer. The limits can be specified per day of the week, by lower and upper hour limits, maximum daily usage time, and maximum weekly usage time.

• For those interested in the path that delivers KDE 4.4 support, it can be found via the Compiz Gitweb interface.

• With a little bit of debugging and messing around KDE 4.4 is ready for production on my laptop. Good work KDE team and the Gentoo KDE herd!

• This last Tuesday KDE SC 4.4 was released and on a lightning-fast time, neoclust managed to have packages available for Mandriva 2010 on KDE official FTP mirrors (thanks neoclust !!). If you want to upgrade to it, it’s really easy.

GNOME Desktop

• If you are interested in joining the team, please join the gnome-infrastructure mailing list and introduce yourself, why you want to join and any relevant skills or experience you have. It is helpful if you have been active in other GNOME teams and can have someone vouch for you. (We are talking about giving you root access to GNOME servers, after all!)

• If you have any questions, please feel free to send me an email, email the infrastructure list or stop by the #sysadmin IRC channel on GIMPNet IRC.

Distributions

Themes

• Are you using Ubuntu and looking for good themes then these ubuntu themes are for you.

New Releases

• Dr. Ali Jahangiri, the well known security expert and author of Live Hacking: The Ultimate Guide to Hacking Techniques & Countermeasures for Ethical Hackers & IT Security Experts, is pleased to announce the launch of the Live Hacking CD, a new Linux distribution designed for ethical hacking. The Live Hacking CD contains the tools and utilities you need to test and hack your own network but using the tools and techniques that more malicious hackers would use.

Red Hat Family

• Red Hat released the first beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.5, providing memory allocation enhancements to the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) hypervisor. RHEL 5.5 also introduces new storage and WiFi drivers, and supports new AMD, IBM, and Intel processors, says the company.

• Red Hat recently announced financial results for its fiscal year 2010 third quarter ended November 30, 2009. Total revenue for the quarter was $194.3 million, an increase of 18% from the year ago quarter. Subscription revenue for the quarter was $164.4 million, up 21% year-over-year.

• Red Hat is trading slightly higher today after it received an Outperform rating today from William Blair & Company.

Debian Family

Ubuntu

• Ok, I am a linux guy and most of you will be thinking that why I am writing this . Let me say , even though many people are agreeing with the statement Ubuntu is always better than Windows , there are a lot of people how think that Ubuntu has too few applications available for use . Ubuntu would be more secure , most faster and more stable , but is it up to par with Windows in doing things , like can we use photoshop cs 4 in linux , or can we play assassins creed 2 in Ubuntu . I am not promising you that you could , but I assure you that you can make your ubuntu linux much more better in doing things . Let me show a handful of essential applications for your linux machine which would transform your ubuntu to a real star performer , doing almost everything you can do in windows .

• Edubuntu is a Linux based, educational operating system of the Ubuntu version. With Edbuntu, Linux and Ubuntu wants to offer students, children, parents, teachers, schools and other education institutions with a great computer utility meant to enhance their learning process.

Mint

• With the addition of KDE, Fluxbox as well as 64-bit editions, it turns out that Linux Mint is turning out to be a more than “just another Ubuntu fork”. Let’s hope other Linux Distributions try to provide the user experience that the Linux Mint guys have managed to accomplish.

• Linux Mint 8 Fluxbox Community Edition can be downloaded from here and Linux Mint 8 KDE64 Community Edition can be downloaded from here.

Devices/Embedded

• Openembedded is the build framework designed to create embedded Linux distributions.

• [...]

• Based on the Linux 2.6.29 kernel, this release includes the complete kernel with all necessary device drivers for the Chipwrights hardware development kit, source code for media player, media browser and IP camera applications integrated with the Openembedded build environment.

• “We plan to use the new capital to pay expenses related to our VoIP operations,” continued Riss. “In addition to the HTC smart phone that utilizes our mobile VoIP service, we are excited about the emergence of Linux-based smart phones that employ session initiation protocol (SIP). We built our VoIP carrier, VoX Communications, to run on a Linux-based SIP product. We believe the new Linux-based mobile devices that use SIP will help our sales growth, as these smart phones are a natural fit for our mobile VoIP product, which runs over the 3G network.”

Compatibility

• TES Electronics is shipping a Linux- and Android-ready hardware/software development kit for home automation, transportation entertainment systems, and industrial displays. The Magik-MX Kit offers a module based on a TI OMAP3530 system-on-chip, an I/O board, a seven-inch multi-touch display, and TES’ Guiliani GUI/HMI framework.

• NEC Electronics announced an ARM Cortex-A9 version of its Linux-ready EMMA Mobile series of multimedia system-on-chips, and it’s also shipping a Linux/Android hardware/software kit for its earlier EMMA Mobile 1.

Phones

• With the N900 Nokia was clearly looking to bridge the gap between laptop and smartphone – and it’s certainly feels like having a mini laptop in your pocket. Aside from the text input issue, it’s more powerful than a basic netbook. It’s inevitably a little awkward to use a phone, but it can be done, and as technology exercise it’s impressive. As such we’d recommend it for geekier gadget hounds, but for the normal – an Android device is a more sensible way to go.

• A bit about the Maemo operating system running the Nokia N900 smart phone. Maemo is a sophisticated linux orientated operating system which Nokia have used to power their Nokia N900 smart phone. Most likely we will see this operating system develop into over several different versions on the next generation Nokia’s like Google release new and improved Androids platforms.

• One of the great aspects of the Maemo operating being linux based is that it is open source software. This allows the growing list of developer and the flowing community like with HTC followers. Their commitment for improvements and modifications to the Maemo software to help Maemo users with their user experience. Also to help Nokia to effectively improve its operating system as to the mass user requirement. Giving what people want. Not what you think they might need.

• Teleca (STO:TELCB) demonstrates how the mobile world can “Love Smart Solutions” at this year’s MWC. Focusing on three solution areas, Mobile Linux, User Experiences and Mobile Applications, the company will be showing the way to increased profitability.

Android

• To enter a word, a user slides a finger or stylus from letter to letter, passing through each required letter as well as others that are “in the way,” and lifting only when the word is completed.

• However, whilst the new version’s name was mentioned, any other given facts seemed to be severely lacking. Working out of the Mountain View based centre for Android’s Linux-based kernel, Mr Swetland released only the name of the new version, and said that because development was moving so swiftly, by the time ‘Gingerbread’ became widely available they would “likely be on (Linux kernel 2.6.).33 or .34.”

• Members of the device tinkering community have managed successfully get a Droid device to connect to USB peripherals. The Linux-based Android OS should be readily extensible, but the hardware that is wrapped around the OS isn’t always conducive to all the possibilities. The trick isn’t quite polished, it involves making your own USB cord and some cable swapping during a hard boot. It’s still a little buggy, but it’s a great step forward.

Sub-notebooks

• Branded as a Compaq device, HP’s Airlife 100 netbook is powered by the same Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM processor that’s found in a number of recently released smartphones including Google’s Nexus One.

• With eeeBuntu on the Asus Netbook, this capability is available through the on-board Bluetooth radio. It’s theoretically possible to transfer files and browse the directories on most Bluetooth-equipped phones. Today, we’ll look at how some of the features work and explore some of the quirks of using Bluetooth that might trip you up.

• My tests were carried out running eeeBuntu 3.0 (kernel version 2.6.29-1-netbook) on an Asus eeePC 1000HE with a 130 GB disk and 2 GB of memory. The little machine also had a Logitech Nano notebook mouse and uses the Atom N280 processor.

• The idea is to offer programs for Windows and Linux netbooks that are optimized for devices with small screens and Atom processors.

• Since my dad taught me how to dual-boot Mandrake Linux 7 with Windows ME in my early pre-teen years, I have not owned a single computer that hasn’t had a Linux distribution on it. And for many years, KDE was my desktop manager of choice. Sometime around KDE 3.4, I deemed KDE too clunky and left it to experiment with other desktop managers.

• Still, I never forgot about my roots in the Linux world, and indeed KDE 4 brought KDE significantly forward towards modern desktops. Now, KDE seems to be turning towards everyone’s favorite rising PC market: netbooks.

• When I first began looking at Moblin a while back, people told me that it was nice, but that I’d miss the standard application set of my operating system of choice, Ubuntu. Interestingly, the trend in the space is actually towards even fewer applications than Moblin allows; the Lenovo Skylight, one intriguing option, is preloaded not with a standard application set, but with widgets running on top of a thin Linux film. Chrome OS, of course, goes even further, dispensing with the idea of applications entirely and pushing a browser only experience.

Tablets

• In 2001 Apple released the iPod, making it a revolutionary year in consumer electronics . Apple began to turn things around, embracing design, making tech cool and, most importantly of all, making relatively complicated computer technology available to the masses.

Free Software/Open Source

• I’m in the midst of creating a local Linux Users Group and I’m cobbling together a quick logo using a Creative Commons photograph, GIMP for making the image properly black and white, and Inkscape for setting the type (FreeSans) and bringing all the elements together.

• Every time I use Inkscape it is a joy and a pleasure. In terms of usability and interface, it is so much nicer than Adobe Illustrator (and I used Illustrator every day for 10 years!). It is also so much cheaper. Like, Free. And it’s available for Windows.

• For years, we’ve heard claims that, for all the wonders of “free software,” the “real” CIO would never use free software, as they would need to have a clear monetary relationship with the provider to ensure things wouldn’t go bad. Of course, that’s pretty silly. Lots of IT departments have made use of all sorts of free software such as Linux and Apache, but a new study suggests that CIOs are quite comfortable with using free software, finding that “76% of CIOs surveyed say they use free software at the enterprise level and 88% said they have free software deployed at the department level.”

• Phipps continued, adding that, “Ultimately, the choice between packaged, sealed-edge, closed software and open source software, is the choice between viewing your IT as a cost center or a competitive weapon. Companies that see IT as a competitive weapon have tended to pick UNIX and the Java platform among other technologies, because it leaves them in control of their IT architecture.”

• The top five, in order of importance, were:

• 1. JBoss

• 2) Tomcat

• 3) Apache Web Server

• 4) Hibernate

• 5) MySQL Database Server

• IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled its entry in the growing market for clustered network-attached storage (NAS) systems.

• Donatella Both my kids use three operating systems without any problems, in spite of cliches and of Nikko’s autism. They watch YouTube, listen to music and do many other things on Windows, Linux and Mac without noticing any difference, with the exception of the unintelligible error messages that Windows sends every time it crashes. I prefer when they use the other systems because I am the one who has to restart the computer when that happens!

• Stop: Apart from being forced to use an operating system that you really don’t like, did you have other problems while using computers or the Internet?

• After six weeks of full-time hacking, with the help of a few friends, we have made it to receiving actual BCCH data from a GSM cell.

• So what does this mean? As I have indicated publicly at the 26C3 conference: Now, that we have managed to create a working GSM network-side implementation (OpenBSC) during the last year, we will proceed to do the same with the phone side.

• [...]

• So, if you want to write Free Software for such a device, you have two options:

• * Reverse engineering the existing hardware and writing your code based on that information * Building your own hardware and then writing the software you wanted to write.

• The great hope nurtured by many of us who spend our days in the open source software communities is that the fundamental principles upon which open source software is built — The Open Source Way — will permeate other industries and walks of life over time, allowing all sorts of new and exciting problems to be solved using methods that value transparency, collaboration, and a meritocracy of ideas.

Vocation

• Beehive, an Apache Software Foundation open source project providing a Java programming model, has been retired due to inactivity, the foundation said on Wednesday.

• In a revision of what the company had said previously, Oracle now will enable projects hosted on the soon-to-be-shut Project Kenai site to be moved to the java.net site.

Office Suites

• If Oracle can provide a first-rate connect-anywhere, edit-anywhere online office suite, it might have finally found something that can break Microsoft’s stronghold on business productivity tools.

• That’s what I’d be looking for in follow on versions to OpenOffice 3.2.

• If you look back on the history of OpenOffice.org, it makes the 3.2 release that came out on Thursday the 11th even more impressive. Nearly 10 years in the making, OpenOffice.org has evolved from a clunky proprietary offering that struggled to import Microsoft Office documents to a productivity powerhouse that is faster, supports a fully open document format (ODF) and handles most proprietary formats with grace.

• IBM is taking Lotus Symphony, a suite built on OpenOffice.org, to the Mac platform and recently launched a next-gen beta for the office suite.

• “Customers are looking for options and choice,” said Rennie. They are looking for options to bring employees and people together and edit, write and change documents in an open standards based way.”

Mozilla

• As Mozilla Messaging looks to monetize its services, the project should think strongly about providing a top-to-bottom solution. Not just connecting with other services, but providing the mail hosting and services that users want. Mozilla Messaging and Status.net (which provides the popular Identi.ca microblogging service) seem like natural allies, for example. I’m not entirely sure what a successful model would look like — but merely providing a client or add-on for existing services doesn’t seem the surest path to success. And I do want to see Mozilla succeed here, for a couple of reasons.

CMS

• There are lots of content management systems out there. Most of which are open source and normally get the job done. However, Drupal stands out amongst them for a host of reasons, five of which are

FSF/FSFE/GNU

• The Keil CA51 Compiler for PSoC 3 and the GNU GCC-ARM Compiler for PSoC 5 are both bundled with the PSoC Creator distribution. The Keil Vision 4 IDE and debugger are also available for use with the Cypress PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 devices.

Releases

• So do you go with something proprietary, like Skye? You could, but there is another option, OpenDNSSEC, which hit Version 1.0 this week.

Programming

• When you write code in Python you can be almost sure your code will run on different operating systems. I say almost sure, not completely sure, because some of the libraries and packages you are using can have different behaviors on different systems.

• Python for S60 (PyS60) has been in flux for some time, with various project forks, but with the official release of Python S60 v2.0, it appears that time is over.

Leftovers

• JAPANESE ELECTRONICS OUTFIT Toshiba and Keio University in Tokyo have made a technological breakthrough that allows SSDs of up to 1TB capacity to be made the size of a postage stamp.

• That is about a 90 per cent reduction in size compared to a standard 2.5-inch hard disk drive.

• Now wouldn’t that be a great lawsuit? Seeing Apple take those on the US terrorist list to court for breaking their iTunes terms of service?

• People who drink two or more sweetened soft drinks a week have a much higher risk of pancreatic cancer, an unusual but deadly cancer, researchers reported on Monday.

• People who drank mostly fruit juice instead of sodas did not have the same risk, the study of 60,000 people in Singapore found.

• If the latest numbers from online ad network Chitika are anything to go by, then we may well be on our way to the world of Idiocracy. According to the study, which compared click through rates to college education, the less educated your audience, the more likely they are to click through on an advertisement.

Science

• The Obama space proposal, which seeks to enable a commercial space industry for transportation to and from low Earth orbit while it cancels space exploration beyond LEO, has sparked a kind of civil war among conservatives.

Security

• Three unarmed security guards were following orders last month when they stood by without intervening as a 15-year-old girl was badly beaten in a downtown Seattle bus tunnel. Now the company they work for and government officials say those orders should be revised.

• The European Commissioner for Transport, vice-presendent Siim Kallas, is preparing a report on body scanners for the European Parliament.

• Except… perhaps that’s not always true. Eric points us to the news that Indian movie star Shahrukh Khan (oddly, I just saw one of his movies) is claiming that the staff at London’s Heathrow airport had not just connected his scan to who he was, but also printed it out and circulated it among some staff.

• The law of unintended consequences has arrived in full force on British campuses, as government policies designed to control immigration turn academic staff into state informers and impose draconian surveillance on UK students and academics.

• The US military in Iraq freed an Iraqi freelance journalist working for the Thomson Reuters media group on Wednesday after holding him for 17 months without charge, the company said.

• Thus governments cannot substantially reduce drug use, prostitution, or immigration by raising the penalty (supply costs): If demand is strong, underground markets will accommodate it. Whether policy should attempt to reduce these demands is a different question. Regardless, policies that only address the supply side cost a lot and afford minimal results.

• Security updates 10.0.45.2 for the Adobe Flash Player and 1.5.3.1930 for AIR fix a critical security vulnerability which allows Flash applets to circumvent certain security functions in order to access other websites without obtaining the user’s permission. A specially crafted Flash file on a malicious web page could read data, including banking data or similar, displayed in other open browser windows.

Environment

• The proposed entity would provide “user-friendly” information to help governments and businesses adapt to climate change, creating a central federal source of information on everything from projections of sea level rise to maps of the nation’s best sites for wind and solar power.

• “Even with our best efforts, we know that some degree of climate change is inevitable,” said Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, whose department includes NOAA. “American citizens, businesses and governments — from local to federal — must be able to rise to the challenges that lie ahead. And that’s where NOAA’s climate service will prove absolutely invaluable.”

• Rich nations furthered their “conspiracy to divide the developing world” at December’s UN climate summit in Copenhagen, while Canada “connived” and the EU acted “to please the United States”, according to an internal document from a Chinese government thinktank obtained by the Guardian.

• A new breed of colonialism is rampaging across the world, with rich nations buying up the natural resources of developing countries that can ill afford to sell. Some staggering deals have already been done, says Paul Vallely, but angry locals are now trying to stop the landgrabs

• Carbon dioxide is “essentially harmless” to human beings and good for plants. So now will you stop worrying about global warming?

• Utah’s House of Representatives apparently has at least. Officially the most Republican state in America, its political masters have adopted a resolution condemning “climate alarmists”, and disputing any scientific basis for global warming.

• The measure, which passed by 56-17, has no legal force, though it was predictably claimed by climate change sceptics as a great victory in the wake of the controversy caused by a mistake over Himalayan glaciers in the UN’s landmark report on global warming.

Finance

• Auction rate securities are again in the news, and they are still garbage, but some smell worse than others link here. Some actually have modest value but new ones are not being sold. What went wrong?

• The first problem was that no one bothered to look at the underlying securities. When prospectuses were sought long after the market crashed, they were hard to find. But why bother, as the derivatives were repriced and could be rolled over in monthly auctions. They came with high ratings from S & P or Moody’s or Fitch and they were apparently completely liquid but paid better than other short term securities.

• A deal has been reached to help Greece tackle its debt crisis, after negotiations between Europe’s leaders in Brussels this morning.

• U.S. President Barack Obama calls the $3.8-trillion US budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America’s economic health.

• In fact, it’s another potent fix given to a sick patient deeply addicted to the dangerous drug — debt.

• There is an established legal principle that people should not have to repay their government’s debt to the extent that it is incurred to launch aggressive wars or to oppress the people.

• These “odious debts” are considered to be the personal debts of the tyrants who incurred them, rather than the country’s debt.

• Given China’s success and the way power and wealth are shifting east, Google’s recent announcement on China generated a lot of debate at Davos. It was a decision seen as both courageous and foolish, often at the same time. Weren’t we quitting the Yukon just as gold was found? It’s a good question. But in the end, you have to do what you believe is right.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• After about two dozen years in Congress, Representative Billy Tauzin of Louisiana was after bigger game — the giant, 200-pound whitetail deer that run through the area of south Texas that hunters call the Golden Triangle.

• The longer this goes on and the larger the loss in potential company profits, the less likely any reform seems. Consider now that none of this would be happening if drugs weren’t patented.

• Well, now, instead of allowing a real “word of mouth” viral campaign with the video, it looks like EMI/Capitol has decided to bootstrap a fake viral word of mouth campaign, by sending around emails (and even submitting directly to us) a request to “get a free Ok Go” song if you just Tweet about it. Seriously. So rather than letting people organically share what they wanted to share, EMI is trying to bribe people into promoting something else.

• EMI, you’re doing it wrong.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• The Court of Appeal rejected that claim, saying that according to a precedent set in a previous case domestic law will apply so long as much of the activity in question took place in the UK.

• Recent DDoS chaos on the Australian internet may have been great fun for all involved – but behind the good-humoured anarchy lies a growing concern that the government really does have a dark and Big Brotherly vision for the future of politics in the country.

• As reported in The Register this week, groups exasperated by government plans for a mandatory firewall that will censor far more than the child porn material claimed, finally resorted to long-promised direct action, with a short and successful DDoS attack on government sites and offices.

• Google says it will not “voluntarily” comply with the government’s request that it censor YouTube videos in accordance with broad “refused classification” (RC) content rules.

• Communications Minister Stephen Conroy referred to Google’s censorship on behalf of the Chinese and Thai governments in making his case for the company to impose censorship locally.

• In the wake of iiNet’s recent court win, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Stephen Conroy has said that he wants the film and internet industries to sit down and try and work out a code of conduct to prevent pirating of copyrighted works rather than working towards legislation changes.

• I think this is a great idea — and the world needs places where free speech is much more seriously protected, but I do wonder how it will work in practice.

• It’s a horrible situation all around, but it looks like the International Olympic Committee is trying to stifle the whole thing by using copyright claims to take down videos on YouTube, saying that only those who paid for broadcast rights can show the video. Now, this could be part of a pre-arranged effort by the Olympics to try to stop any Olympics videos from hitting YouTube, but it shows the problem with such a blanket policy.

• Flirting with 90 mph on a $100 million track pushing speed to the outer limits, the luger from the republic of Georgia tilted his head slightly forward as his sled climbed the high-banked wall.

• Tania Branigan reports from Beijing on the 11-year sentence handed to Liu Xiaobo Link to this video

• The US and European Union today renewed calls for the immediate release of high profile dissident Liu Xiaobo, as a Chinese court upheld his 11-year-sentence.

• Now, we’ve got a bit more to throw at you, LBers. One of the lawyers handling the case for the defendants (that is, defending the constitutionality of Prop. 8) sent us a note recently attacking the plaintiffs’ approach in the case. Specifically, Brian Raum, the head of marriage litigation for the Alliance Defense Fund, has accused the plaintiffs and their lead lawyers, David Boies and Ted Olson, of unfairly attacking religion.

Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

• You may remember last year that the Conference Board of Canada (who, until then, was pretty well respected) released a report on “intellectual property policy” that was blatantly plagiarized from US copyright industry lobbyists.

• Online video sharing site Veoh is going out of business. The AllThingsD blog says it cut the entire staff yesterday and a bankruptcy filing is expected soon.

• [...]

• “Veoh is dead. Universal Music lawsuit was the main killer. Veoh won resoundingly but was mortally wounded by the senseless suit.”

• Dmitry Shapiro, CEO and founder of Veoh, said part of the company’s problems were due to a costly legal battle with Universal Music Group over copyright infringement and the challenging economic environment.

• Veoh basically won big in the lawsuit. Time and time again, every trick that Universal Music tried — including suing Veoh’s investors directly, was rejected by the judge, and the final ruling late last year was that Veoh abided by the DMCA and was protected by its safe harbors from Universal Music’s lawsuit. It was a complete victory.

• You don’t compete with “free” by taking your ball and going home. You don’t compete with “free” by pretending that old artificial scarcities are coming back after the wall has been broken down. You don’t compete with “free” by suing customers. You don’t compete with “free” by shunning those who have business models that work. You compete with free by offering a better product and a better business model. WMG is choosing to go in the other direction.

• But apparently Lone Wolf has been sending out cease-and-desists to websites that have nothing to do with Lone Wolf’s Army Builder, and demanding that the phrase be blocked in forums on totally different subjects. Yes, they’re saying that no one can use the term in conversation

• [...]

• Update: As pointed out in the comments — and in a friendly email from Lone Wolf’s lawyers — Lone Wolf has backed down a bit and sorta, but not really, apologized. The guy claims that he’s not a lawyer (though, whoever emailed us said they were a lawyer representing the company), and didn’t quite realize what he was doing (and it showed).

• As for the copyright claim, again, that seems rather weak, as it seems to focus on still images. There may be an issue with the unauthorized documentary makers originally using a cover that was similar to the original cover pitched by Heckelsville, but even then, the makers of the unauthorized documentary have already agreed to change the cover to make it different.

• nfarrell writes “Last week, an Australian Judge ruled that copyright laws do not apply to collections of facts, regardless of the amount of effort that was spent collecting them. In this case, the case surrounded the reproduction of entries from the White and Yellow Pages, but the ruling referred to a previous case involving IceTV, which republishes TV guides. Does this mean that other databases of facts, such as financial data, are also legally able to be copied and redistributed?” Here are analyses from a former legal adviser to the directory publisher which prevailed as the defendant in this case, and from Smart Company.

• ANYONE can now copy and reuse listings in the Yellow Pages and White Pages, after a court ruled they are not protected by copyright.

• There are some places that do allow copyrights on aggregated facts, but a growing body of research has found that such “database rights” or copyrights on aggregated facts tends to hinder innovation rather than encourage it — and if the purpose of copyright law is to create incentives for new works and for innovation, allowing copyrights on collections of factual information is a bad idea. So, congrats to Australia on another good copyright ruling.

• Google’s deletion of music blogs accused of distributing music without permission has proven to be a controversial topic this week, as one might expect. Some are calling it “Musicblogocide 2010,” according to The Guardian, whose in-depth article on the topic is titled: “Google shuts down music blogs without warning.”

• Nobody likes to hear that music bloggers — who tend to write with infectious enthusiasm benefiting both fans and copyright holders — lost years of work when they may not so much have broken the law as grazed up against it. It seems especially unfortunate if they enabled an avoidable outcome by ignoring or being ignorant of the stakes of not taking the proper corrective actions when formally warned they were in violation of dreaded (and widely ignored) terms of service. (Deleted blogs include Pop Tarts Suck Toasted, Masala, I Rock Cleveland, To Die By Your Side, It’s a Rap, Ryan’s Smashing Life, and Living Ears.)

• Remember back in December when Vice President Joe Biden hosted a one-sided “piracy summit”, ridiculously declaring that “all of the stakeholders” were present (despite there not being a single representative from the technology industry, nor anyone representing consumer interests or ISPs). The “stakeholders” were entirely the entertainment industry. And, even better, despite promises of openness and transparency, the press was kicked out so top execs from most of the major entertainment industry companies could collude talk directly with many of the top administration officials, including Joe Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and others. You knew that this wasn’t just a random meet and greet and that something would come out of it.

• And, indeed, less than two months later, we have Eric Holder announcing a special “IP task force” within the Justice Department designed to take on “the rise in intellectual property crime.”

• The department said the new task force emerged out of a White House meeting hosted by Vice President Biden in December, which included Holder and other members of the president’s Cabinet as well as executives from the movie studios, record companies, book publishers and television networks. Biden said in a statement that the Obama administration “is committed to stronger and stricter enforcement of intellectual property rights, and this new task force is a step in the right direction.”

• Indeed, what many people have pointed out is that the really pernicious part of ACTA is in reading between the lines. There are already international agreements on intellectual property that include clear safe harbors and consumer protection. What’s notable in the leaked drafts of ACTA is that such things are missing. So even if it doesn’t force the US to change the law, it could very much hinder attempts by US to come to its senses and fix the broken parts of the law.

• The Bill provides for the Secretary of State to have the power to require ISPs to take “technical measures” in respect of account holders who have been the subject of copyright infringement reports. The scope of the measures will be defined in secondary legislation and could be wide-ranging.

• We do not believe that such a skeletal approach to powers which engage human rights is appropriate. There is potential for these powers to be applied in a disproportionate manner which could lead to a breach of internet users’ rights to respect for correspondence and freedom of expression.

• Today’s news that Google shut down music blogs that were accused of copyright infringement is rightfully getting plenty of coverage. Mostly, it is being held up as another in a long line of examples of problems with the DMCA notice-and-takedown system. This is a great example of a problem with the DMCA because, at least according to The Guardian, the notices that Google relied on to delete the blogs were woefully incomplete. Google should not have acted until it had proper notices from rights holders, including the name of the actual work allegedly infringed. Since many of the notices did not even include this information, there was no way for the bloggers to file a DMCA counternotice.

• They’re based on the false belief that copyright infringement is an easy “yes” or “no” decision that can be determined upon seeing it. But what we’re discovering in both this situation and in the Viacom situation is that even the copyright holders are really bad at figuring out if something is infringing or not. So why should anyone expect third parties to be able to do a better job?

• Film Raked In More Than 10 Times Its Production Cost

• Hulu won’t provide an exact view count for Strictly Sexual, but there are enough people watching to make Long a profit.

• Just because you don’t like what the market decides a book is worth, doesn’t mean that it’s not a real price.

• And, really, what’s the problem here? Some might claim that it’s unfair to the original authors whose work she used — but the author of the largest segments, named Airen, is getting a ton of attention for Airen’s own book, which received little actual attention when originally published.

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