● 02.17.10

● Links 17/2/2010: Calculate Linux 10.2 Released, SimplyMEPIS 8.5 @ Beta 5

Posted in News Roundup at 5:26 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Launched in October 2004, Ubuntu is one of the most highly regarded Linux distributions in the world with more than 10 million users. With users in homes, schools, businesses and governments around the world, Ubuntu is a powerful and secure open source operating system for desktops, laptops, netbooks and servers. Ubuntu contains all the applications you need and will always be free of charge. With the values of open source software at its core, Ubuntu costs nothing to download or update.

• The Linux Box announces a partnership with Canonical whereby it will market the Ubuntu Linux operating system in the U.S.

• The Linux Box has announced a partnership with Canonical whereby it will market the Ubuntu Linux operating system in the United States.

• Freeform Dynamics’s new survey “of 1,275 IT professionals from the UK, USA, and other geographies” has just been published. Two-thirds of respondents said that cutting costs was a prime mover behind their decisions to switch to Linux on the desktop but that user acceptance was a key consideration in the decision to do so.

• As of this writing (Tuesday Feb 16th) there don’t seem to be any new suggestions from Microsoft to assist XP users whose systems were rendered un-bootable after installing the February 9th patches. For example, the last entry on The Microsoft Security Response Center blog is four days old.

• So let me offer a suggestion: boot to Linux and move some files around.

• When Kveton was 31 years old he founded the Open Source Lab at Oregon State University in Corvallis. After working at various big tech companies for a few years, he had joined the University and cut its hardware budget by 75% the previous year – just by buying open source Linux servers. The school decided to put the budget surplus back into the paradigm that made the difference. Then Google, IBM and other big companies started giving the new Lab money to host open source projects they were working on. Soon Kveton had a staff of 25 students and contacts all over the Open Source world. That was 6 years ago and those contacts have been invaluable throughout the rest of his career.

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• After continued success hosting other open source projects (like Drupal) at the Lab, Kveton decided he wanted to try something entrepreneurial.

• I am pretty sure that if Microsoft wanted to invest the time and money to create the most secure and stable operating system, they could. They don’t have idiots working for them. I think it is that “if you scratch my back, I will scratch yours mentality.” It also doesn’t help that whenever a call is placed to a support center or when a PC is brought into a repair shop, the solution usually given by the technician is to re-image Windows. If I have a virus, why can’t you just remove the virus and I will be on my way?

• I, as many of my readers, on the other hand know better and choose to rely on something a lot more stable and secure with (insert flavor of Linux or UNIX here). Why be bothered with constantly having to maintain or repair your OS. Sometimes you just need things to work. Maybe that is why you read stories about how repair shops such as Best Buy’s will refuse the repair of a computing device if you are not running a version of Windows. They probably don’t see any money it.

• (Kassel, Germany: February 11, 2010) The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world’s premier Linux certification organization (http://www.lpi.org), announced that its affiliate, LPI Central Europe (http://www.lpice.eu) will host a full program of activities at CeBIT 2010 in Hanover, Germany. Open Source will be a top theme at this years edition of one of the world’s leading trade fairs for the ICT industry (http://www.cebit.de/opensource_e).

• Similarly, GO-Global for UNIX Personal Edition publishes UNIX or Linux applications onto the Internet or network for remote access from any PC, Mac, or Web browser.

• The new JoikuSpot Linux Edition contains enriched features such as Speed Measurement to allow users to accurately see their mobile internet connection speed. Users see exactly the mobile data speed they get with their mobile broadband subscription.

• It appears that Comcast has no idea how to handle someone with an IQ over 30. This individual just wants setup fancast to watch hbo programming on his computer. Clearly Comcastic doesn’t know how to handle such a complicated question and the madness begins.

• The below is a cut and paste of the IM discussion with Comcast this individual has.

Server

• Call it a rare triple play in the open source server market. Lenovo, Red Hat and Tech Data are partnering to give resellers discounts on select Lenovo ThinkServers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced. Here are the details — and the implications for open source solutions providers.

• Polaris claims that the Linux based system can potentially bring down the set-up and running cost of retail store software by 50 percent

• The new TPC-H benchmark result of 102,375 queries per hour (QphH) was recorded using Sybase IQ 15.1 with the HP ProLiant DL785 G6 server and running the Red Hat(R) Enterprise Linux 5.3 platform, achieving a price/performance of $3.63 per transaction(1). The benchmark represents the best result among Linux and x86 vendors in the non-clustered marketplace at this scale factor(2) and is further proof of Sybase IQ’s ability to deliver maximum performance by utilizing available assets while reducing the cost of ownership for mid-tier organizations.

Kernel Space

• Enhancements to the ALSA code for HD audio codecs, a V4L/DVB driver for the Mantis TV chip, drivers for MSI laptops and drivers for newer AMD CPUs are just some of the improvements to Linux hardware support. Android drivers have now been escorted from the staging area, while Ramzswap (formerly Compcache) framework for compressing RAM has been added.

Graphics Stack

• X Server 1.7.5 doesn’t have much to offer beyond the 1.7.5 release candidates from weeks ago, but mostly smaller changes scattered throughout the X Server code-base.

• To benchmark the Gallium3D driver in Fedora 13 for Nouveau we fired up the Phoronix Test Suite and ran the OpenArena, World of Padman, Urban Terror, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Warsow test profiles. We tested each of these OpenGL games at five different resolutions: 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1280 x 1024, 1680 x 1050, and 1920 x 1080.

• In other words, there really isn’t much to get excited about if you are a Linux user when reading today’s press release. There are, however, other significant changes — for better or worse — coming to the Catalyst Linux driver this month or next. When we are allowed to share, you can be sure that we will. Maybe X Server 1.7 support will finally come too.

Applications

• How much functionality can you pack into a 64×64 square? That’s the basic question behind many dockapps – utilities that can be run on the “dock” of many popular desktop environments. While most of them are designed for Step-type window managers such as Windowmaker, these dockapps can also run in things like XFCE, Fluxbox and Openbox. They include system monitors, volume controls, program launchers, email checkers and more. Today we’ll check out some of the more useful dockapps out there, and each will include screen shots, descriptions, and any little notes that might help when it comes to usage.

• Getting to know KDE shows me nifty things about Dolphin as a file manager. I mean, I’ve read about the features but it’s not the same as really getting around to using it on a more regular basis.

• A few weeks back we blogged about ‘GNOME VLC Player’ – a native GTK+ spin of VLC with the mission to have a “simple” interface inside a gtk+ body.

• That project has since been re-named ‘GNOME Media Player’ and has gotten its very own PPA – thus making installation a snap.

• How much functionality can you pack into a 64×64 square? That’s the basic question behind many dockapps – utilities that can be run on the “dock” of many popular desktop environments. While most of them are designed for Step-type window managers such as Windowmaker, these dockapps can also run in things like XFCE, Fluxbox and Openbox. They include system monitors, volume controls, program launchers, email checkers and more. Today we’ll check out some of the more useful dockapps out there, and each will include screen shots, descriptions, and any little notes that might help when it comes to usage.

Instructionals

Desktop Environments

• Linux users have the unique privilege and challenge of picking the distribution that fits them best. Most start out their Linux-experience with a major distribution like Ubuntu, Fedora, or openSUSE, and for some, that’s as far as they go. Others, curious or eager to try the variety of Linus Torvald-”flavors” available, start trying to find out what differences exist between “smaller” distributions like Elive or Crunchbang and the bigger ones.

K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

• Between radical changes and limited functionality, the KDE 4 series got off to a rough start. However, with each release, KDE 4 has improved steadily and silenced more critics. Now, with the KDE 4.4 release, the series has reached first maturity.

• Those who expect everything to behave exactly as it did in the KDE 3 series may still struggle with 4.4. But, for those willing to accept change, 4.4 has no shortage of new features to offer, ranging from the implementation of several long-term directions to enhanced usability on the desktop — including Plasma Netbook, a new interface designed specifically for netbook computers.

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• But, by far the greatest desktop innovation in KDE 4.4 is one that is also the simplest — the ability to group windows by tabs. This feature is implemented by a single item added to each window’s menu. Yet the implications for easing users’ workflow is immense.

• With the rise of KDE 4.4 comes a new crop of desktop widgets (or Plasmoids). Earlier renditions of KDE 4.x saw the Plasmoids less than useful. The latest workings, however, have become quite useful, productive even.

• In this article I will introduce you to five of those Plasmoids that can help your productivity in one way or another. I will also show you how the Plasmoids are now installed.

Distributions

• Some Linux distributions are light-weight (they’ll run just fine on your old laptop), some are targeted at people who just want to try out Linux without replacing their main OS while other desktop distros (say Ubuntu) include a more comprehensive collection of software applications and also support a wide variety of hardware devices.

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• Arch Linux is a recommended distro for power (experienced) users as it allows them to create a customized Linux installation built from the ground up. It does not have a graphical install interface.

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• Slackware is another distro that deserves mention in this context. As compared to Arch Linux, Slackware Linux provides more stable packages and is thus more conservative. However, Arch Linux provides a more usable package management system that takes care of dependencies.

New Releases

• The Russian developer Alexander Tratsevskiy proudly announced last week, on the Linux Questions forum, the availability of Calculate Linux 10.2, which includes all its derivatives: Calculate Linux Desktop, Calculate Linux Server, Calculate Linux Scratch and Calculate Linux XFCE.

• added: ddrescue 1.11, testdisk photorec 6.11, lzip 1.8, rsync 3.0.6, dbus 1.2.14, netcat 1.10, LVM 2.2.02.58 update: kernel 2.6.32.8, usbutils 0.84, fsarchiver 0.6.7, ntfs-3g 2010.1.16AR.1, nmap 5.21, partimage 0.6.8, mutt 1.5.20, groff 1.20.1, findutils 4.4.2

• Based on OpenSolaris snv128a. JWM as WM, system monitor – conky, keyboard layout switcher – SCIM. Now with fastest browser Midori – Twitter, Facebook and other sites is working well. Fast start: boot LiveCD (LiveUSB), configure network (Menu ->Setup->Net Setup), run zfsinstall (~pfexec zfsinstall), reboot and enjoy.

Red Hat Family

• In partnership with Red Hat and Oracle; and in their endeavor to lead the market towards a more proficient, secure and better performing infrastructural solutions; Savvytek was chosen by Middle East Payment Services (MEPS) to implement their new core application – RS2 – based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Oracle technologies. This technology migration project comes to support MEPS direction in building a Highly Available, Cost-Effective–Ready Data center that hosts and supports their mission-critical, dynamic operation.

Fedora

• Did you know that you can use Fedora trademarks to create skins, application themes, Firefox personas, and other such application sprucer-uppers, pursuant to our trademark guidelines? You can find this change, along with complete usage guidelines, through our trademark guidelines page on the Fedora wiki.

Debian Family

• MEPIS has announced SimplyMEPIS 8.4.97, the fifth beta of MEPIS 8.5, now available from MEPIS and public mirrors. The ISO files for 32 and 64 bit processors are SimplyMEPIS-CD_8.4.97-b5_32.iso and SimplyMEPIS-CD_8.4.97-b5_64.iso respectively. Deltas, requested by the MEPIS community, are also available.

• The plan is to introduce DNSSEC in several steps so that we can react to issues that arise without breaking everything at once.

Ubuntu

• We are pleased to announce the launch of the brand new Ubuntu single sign on service. The goal of this service is to provide a single, central login service for all Ubuntu-related sites, thus making it more convenient for Ubuntu users and community members to access information, communicate, and contribute. This service will replace the existing Launchpad login service that is currently in use for many Ubuntu-related sites, although existing Launchpad accounts will continue to work in the new service.

• Autonomic Resources, an IT and service integration firm serving the U.S. federal government, announced today that the General Services Administration (GSA) has approved the company to offer Canonical’s Ubuntu and Landscape to government customers.

• For a long time, the Ubuntu family has had three members–Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu (sorry Edubuntu; we’re not counting you). But that may change, with a new project, Lubuntu, vying for official endorsement by Canonical. Here’s a look at Lubuntu, and thoughts on what its future may hold.

• The Lubuntu project, which was established a year ago as a community endeavor, aims to create a lightweight Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. Towards this end, it uses the LXDE desktop environment in combination with the Openbox window manager to keep the demand on system resources low.

• As a derivative of Ubuntu this ‘Live CD’ runs directly from the CD and doesn’t need installing on your hard-drive. Once booted you can use the included tools to perform penetration tests and ethically hack on your own network to ensure that it is secure from outside intruders. As well as the standard Linux networking tools the Live Hacking CD has tools for DNS enumeration and reconnaissance as well as utilities for foot-printing, password cracking and network sniffing. It also has programs for spoofing and a set of wireless networking utilities.

Mint

• I came across this interesting article today and it brings up some very good arguments regarding the usability of Mint over Ubuntu for new Linux users.

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• In my mind, Mint is not really a Linux derivative but more of a highly customized Ubuntu install. Most of the modifications in Mint I find I make in Ubuntu. Mint cannot survive without Ubuntu.

Devices/Embedded

• Wipro Technologies on Tuesday announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that it has tied up with Texas Instruments (TI) to offer services on TI’s OMAP processors. The services, which include Linux baseport, Android operating system porting on hardware platforms, middleware, third-party component integration, application development, and operator customisation, aim to address the commercialisation requirements for OEMs designing on Android, ensuring fast time to market.

• RoweBots Research, Inc., a supplier of tiny embedded POSIX RTOS products, today announced the launch and release of Unison™ Version 5 and the open-source version of Unison Version 4. These two ultra-tiny embedded-Linux™ and POSIX compatible RTOSs open Renesas Technology Corp.’s SH-2A microcontroller (MCU) family to Linux and POSIX compatible development for the first time.

• One of the greatest things about a more open platform for smartphones I believe, is the ability to (if you choose) customize it until you’re hearts content. From personal experience, I swap ROM’s every couple of days on my DROID trying out the updates and newcomers to the custom DROID ROM scene alike. But porting various ROM’s developed for your phone, or at the very least, the phone’s operating system, are rather easy all things considered. Especially so when comparing a simple ROM port from one Android device to the next against porting a full blown desktop OS to a Sony Xperia X1. Oh yeah, it’s real.

• The joint SoC platform is based on the Cortex A9 processor and ARM’s physical IP, but taps GloFo’s experience with 28nm High-K Metal Gate process to create a proven reference design for manufacturers of smartphones, smartbooks, tablets and a host of other mobile devices.

• Synology America announced a two-bay member of its DiskStation network-attached storage (NAS) family that can expand via an optional seven-bay expansion enclosure from 4TB to up to 14TB. Aimed at small-to-medium businesses, the DiskStation DS710+ runs Linux on an Intel Atom D410, and supplies gigabit Ethernet and USB connectivity.

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• Like the DS210j, the DS1010+, and other Synology NAS devices, the DS710+ runs version 2.2 of Synology’s Linux-based, DNLA-compliant Disk Station Manager software, which is compatible with Linux, Windows, and Mac workstations. DSM 2.2 enables automated backup features, remote file sharing, iSCSI target support, and multimedia streaming, says the company.

Phones

Android

• Sony Ericsson announced two compact, scaled-down members of its Xperia X10 Android smartphone line. The Xperia X10 Mini and the QWERTY-keyboard equipped X10 Mini Pro both offer Qualcomm processors clocked to 600MHz with 2.5-inch QVGA touchscreens, five-megapixel cameras, HSPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, aGPS, and Android 1.6, says the company.

• Acer announced three new Android smartphones, as well as an Android 2.1 version of its Liquid phone. Acer’s BeTouch e400 and BeTouch E110 fall into the mid- and low-end range, while the Acer “Liquid e” and Formula One styled Acer Ferrari smartphone both appear to target the upper ranges of Android phones.

• In its Cliq XT incarnation, the Quench appears to be intended as the next-generation version of Motorola’s first Android phone, the T-Mobile-sold Cliq. However, the company did not list which global carrier(s) would pick up the Quench version.

• Lumigon Corp. announced three Android 2.1 phones — the T1, S1, and E1 — touted as the first smartphones to use Freescale’s 1GHz i.MX51 system-on-chip. Meanwhile, the company also reported contributing to Ulysse Nardin’s Chairman, an Android handset that will start at over $13,000, and Freescale announced an Android evaluation kit for the i.MX51.

• High Tech Computer (HTC), the world’s biggest maker of Windows Mobile and Google Android OS smartphones, is working on technologies for applications used in handsets and application stores and plans to put this software to use but not until a later time.

• The similarity is no big surprise considering HTC built Nexus One for Google.

• For Google this is also good because with open source multiple people can start contributing to apps such that they can improve faster. Furthermore people can start new projects by simply reusing open source code of other Open Source Android applications. All in all it will spur innovation and improve quality of applications and in the end that’s good for Google because the platform will become more popular.

• Furthermore it fits in the Google policy that they stimulate Open Source.

• 2. Google’s Android platform gained critical mass 18 months from launch, heralding the rise of the open source OS. Juniper said. Android had been as much about as enabling search and services across different devices as capturing OS market share. This had prompted Nokia to open-source its Symbian environment and was being followed by Nokia and Intel, which combined efforts to launch the Linux-based MeeGo platform .

• Google, which became an important player in the mobile industry with the launch of Linux-based open platform Android in 2008 and last month’s release of the first Google phone, the Nexus One, denied that it is competing against mobile carriers.

Sub-notebooks

• Innovative architecture entrenched in the open-source world, elegant and sober design, yet stylish, security and mobility with the G-Key, a personal and bootable USB key, Gdium is an ultraportable computer that is one of the cornerstones of a wider environment dedicated to knowledge, communication and learning.

• Since the desktop line of Windows currently doesn’t run on ARM processors, we can exclude XP/Vista/7 from the list of likely contenders as smartbook operating systems. Windows 7 successors are currently not planned to be ported to ARM and even that wouldn’t be a complete solution since Windows applications will have to be ported as well (a very wide, close-sourced ecosystem).

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• Linux on the other hand has a very good technical background on ARM. It has no limitations for processing cores and operating memory and has targeted distributions for this architecture. Android is an outstanding example but several well-known distributions – like Ubuntu – have ARM ports in addition to their x86 base edition. Also, due to the fact that most of the Linux applications are open-source, they are at least possible to port, so we can expect the full usual complement of desktop Linux applications to show up on an ARM Linux distribution when the need becomes visible for them.

• My personal favorites are Windows 7 Home Premium and Jolicloud, thanks to the ease use. My HP Mini is currently running Windows 7 Home Premium and runs Jolicloud off of a thumbdrive when I want a different experience. I am also testing out a Sony Vaio W which comes standard with Windows 7 Starter and despite the limitations of Starter I am getting by alright so far; though I couldn’t use it every day thanks to the lack of multi-monitor support.

• In the end Jolicloud manages to keep a good mixture of native and web applications, and abstracts the differences between them so you can just focus on doing your work. This is one OS to look for when it releases.

Tablets

• No one has a clue how much an OpenTablet will cost, or when it will go on sale. Considering that we’re having a hard enough time figuring out who’s going to buy a $500 JooJoo, the folks at OpenPeak better aim low if they want to make Apple sweat. Some impressive battery life estimates wouldn’t hurt their cause, either.

MeeGo/Maemo/Moblin

• There are many open platforms for software in the tech world from operating systems to development environments for various software. We rarely see open hardware or mobile devices though. Aava Mobile has unveiled what it calls the world’s first fully open mobile device at MWC.

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• The reference design is aimed at Moblin 2.1 and Android for the OS options with plans for support of MeeGo in the future. Features include an extended touch screen, full HD video capability, micro USB port, HD video conferencing, dual mics, 3D sound and UI, GSM capable, and it has GPS, WiFi, compass, and an accelerometer.

• Intel, Nokia and the MeeGo community are thinking much bigger than tablets, phones or netbooks. While MeeGo greets competition with the iPad head on, it will also compete in a variety of device categories not yet fully defined thanks to its approach to open source development and cross-device portability provided by Qt. The “killer app” is not a single device locked down with crippling DRM. The “killer app” is your content and the ability to access the Internet from anywhere: a phone, a car, a kitchen or television regardless of the device or who makes it.

• It seems clear that Jobs miss-stepped by not thinking big enough because – despite his brilliance – Apple products are being confined to the limits of his team’s imaginations, while the future is about accessing content from anywhere.

• It’s the third N900 firmware update to be posted since the gadget’s November 2009 release. It’s version 3.2010.02-8 and it weighs in at a mere 16.2MB.

• Next: Enter the latest addition to the touchscreen devices set to da-beau in 2010: MeeGo. In a joint effort between the Intel and Nokia companies. MeeGo, a Linux based operating system, is going to be targeted at both ARM and x86 based devices (despite the former of the two not being made by Intel). While MeeGo is still in the very preliminary stages of development, other Linux-based touchscreen-orientated operating systems, such as Android and Maemo, have shown us that the Linux platform is more than capable of functioning on such devices in an elegant manner. With backing from such large companies MeeGo is going to be hard-pressed to not get at least some publicity.

• The standard machine vision software HALCON Embedded runs on the mobile phone Nokia N900 (Linux-based operating system Maemo). Test runs by the manufacturer of HALCON, MVTec Software GmbH (Munich, Germany), have shown an outstanding performance.

• Sure, the folks at Moblin recently announced that they were merging with the Maemo project to develop a new OS called MeeGo. But that hasn’t stopped PC makers from installing the latest version of the Moblin netbook operating system on their latest models and showing them off at trade shows like Mobile World Congress and CES.

Free Software/Open Source

• Open source was Best Supporting Actor in the 2010 Intelligent Enterprise Editors’ Choice Awards. It plays an important part — in some cases, a star turn — for four of The Dozen top-category winners and for eleven of the thirty-six Ones to Watch. Noting that the awards reflect both current impact and our expectations — all forty-eight awardees, really, are “ones to watch” — clearly, in our estimation, open source has reached a new level of enterprise importance and promise.

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• There’s really nothing new in my points, just a reaffirmation and extension of common knowledge regarding the value open source. Intelligent Enterprise clearly sees open source as delivering ever increasing value for enterprise information management and applications. 2011 should be no exception.

• First, let’s talk about breadth of opportunity. Mark seems to assume that every student developer has the opportunity to engage in commercial development. This is demonstrably untrue. It may be true that an elite school like Georgia Tech provides these kinds of opportunities to most of their conputing students — but what about everywhere else? For that matter, what about the kids at Georgia Tech who, for whatever reason, don’t make the cut? Unless you can guarantee 100% co-op or internship placement for every computing student on Earth (and let’s be honest, we’ll never get even close to that number), there will always be aspirant student developers who have no chance at all to see a commercial codebase, or to engage in Legitimate Peripheral Participation.

• Open source = competitive solutions

• More and more, open source software is used/bought, not because it is open source/free (speech/beer) but because it is a good software (intrinsic value). The fact that this software/solution is open source is not the determining factor that make customers buy it. On a head to head competition with closed source alternative, a bunch of open source players emerges (Firefox, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Tomcat, etc.) and are in a position to become market-leaders.

• Technology solutions provider for the igaming industry Cubeia, has announced the release of Firebase Community Edition, a scalable, enterprise server for multiplayer games.

Healthcare

• It all originated from the need to host GNUmed Live CDs, VMware images and so on. Nothing comes for free and there was no way we could host these images on the GNUmed servers.

• If you’re browsing the web looking for sites about open source healthcare, here are five I found interesting. There are a ton of sites out there, and I tried to stay away from those that talked strictly about software–instead focusing on those that tackled the issues in open source ways beyond technology.

Mobile

• Of course, though the fuel behind the fire, experts are also warning that there are obvious pitfalls to developers, in particular the possibility of decreasing standard as open source coding continues to become available across platforms.

• Symbian’s recent mobile operating system dubbed S^3, will go down in history as the companies first entirely open source release to engage more people in creating an application environment free of restrictions.

• At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Research In Motion announced an overhaul of its Blackberry phone web browser. Like the iPhone and Android systems, the new browser is WebKit based and is expected to be available on Blackberry devices later this year. in interviews Mike Lazardis, co-CEO of RIM said “You’ll see how quickly it downloads, how quickly it renders and how smooth it scrolls and zooms in”.

• The use of open source WebKit browser engine by RIM would give the Canadian company parity with such other players in the market as Apple and Google.

Web Browsers

• The Linux version of Google’s Chrome browser has received a tuneup. Updates fix a handful of bugs; they also bring in better support for custom fonts and improvements in GTK theme mode. The Linux and Mac versions of Chrome still trail the Windows version in terms of development, though it’s interesting that some Chrome features are appearing in Linux before they show up in Mac.

Mozilla

• This is a must-read for Firefox fans! We’ll review 10 cool add-ons that will make your cross-platform Mozilla web browser even better. We’ll review add-ons to help fix annoyances, save time, discover advanced functionality, and stay connected.

Fog Computing

• Finally, they are becoming the industry standard and their interfaces are or will be incorporated into a variety of third party providers. One example is Linux distro vendor Ubuntu. They have an Enterprise Cloud offering that makes use of the same AWS programming interfaces, making it easier for developers to port their cloud applications to a private server running Ubuntu inside your corporate data center. Another is coming from Racemi, which plans on having tools that can import VMware virtual machines into and out of AWS later this year.

• At the Cloud Law Summit in London on Wednesday last week, Andrew Charlesworth, director of the University of Bristol centre for IT and law, said the reasons some businesses choose open-source software — lower cost and lack of vendor lock-in — could be eroded by cloud services.

• As part of its effort to find the best employees it can, Twitter has launched a directory to the open source projects it supports, with cute little icons representing the employees working on each one.

• In recent months, there seems to be a mad rush of companies trying to one-up each other with how open-source they are. Twitter is the latest, as they have launched a directory of all the open source projects they’re currently working on and/or contributing to.The list is fairly impressive. It includes open source projects in Ruby, Scala, Java, C/C++, and other various tools.

Sun/Oracle

• When I saw Shlomi’s post on why not to use apt-get or yum for MySQL, I thought immediately that his conclusions are quite reasonable. What you get from the Linux distributions is not the same thing that you find in the official MySQL downloads page. Now, whether you value more the completeness of the server or the ease of administration through the distribution installation tools, it’s up to you and your business goals. We at the MySQL team have organized a meeting with the Linux distributions with the intent of finding out which differences and problems we may have with each other, and to solve them by improving communication. What follows is a summary of what happened in Brussels during the meeting.

• The deal is done. Oracle now owns Sun. Oracle’s main message to Sun’s customers seems to be “Don’t worry, be happy.” That’s not easy when Oracle is not explaining in any detail what it will be doing with open-source software offerings like MySQL, OpenOffice and OpenSolaris.

• MilaX, a Live distribution of OpenSolaris, is available in version 0.5 with new software.

Business

• Talend, the recognized market leader in open source data integration software, today announced that 2009 was a record year for the company. For the tenth consecutive quarter, Talend achieved record performance, reflecting the company’s ability to deliver cost-optimized, high-performance data management solutions to global companies of all sizes.

• The world of open source software—cited by Thomas Friedman as the most disruptive of the 10 forces making the world flat today—turns this notion of property on its head. The ownership society seems to be doing nothing to help—it’s sucking value out of our system by the trillions, and it acts as though its ownership is an entitlement rather than a responsibility for action.

• For an open source company, nurturing a community around the software is as important as picking the right licence. Although developer communities tend to be more self-starting with a reasonably open development process, user communities, which are a source of valuable feedback, need more encouragement. The H went to the first meeting of the UK BIRT User Group (BUG) to see how one company was helping to create a user community.

Funding

• The business suite application vendor OpenERP announces today that it raised 3 million euros. The investors are Sofinnova Partners, represented by Olivier Sichel, and the Iliad’s managers, Xavier Niel and Olivier Rosenfeld. The funds raised will allow OpenERP to achieve its ambition to be one of the leading application business suite vendors worldwide.

BSD/UNIX

• Linux Pro Magazine met the author of numerous standard works in informatics and the most famous Linux critic at the Fosdem in Brussels.

• For most of us, thinking of the University of California Berkley doesn’t bring about images of nerdy software engineers, but instead makes us think more of LSD, hippies, the children’s revolt, and Vietnam… Despite all of that, they are a prominent uni, and they did create Berkley Unix. While BSDs are usually source compatible with AIX, HPUX, and Linux there are also two API layers available, Linux and WINE. Currently, there are four main flavors: OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Darwin. OpenBSD is focused on security, FreeBSD is focused on being general purpose, and NetBSD is focused on running everywhere (really… everywhere like toasters, palmtop computers, servers, mainframes… you name it, NetBSD runs on it). The Berkley Software Distribution has long been considered one of the most stable, secure, and efficient platforms available.

• The Unison Operating System offers an ultra tiny embedded POSIX environment for 32 bit microcontroller (MCU) based development that is also Linux compatible.

• The BSD licensed operating system is designed to be small, highly portable and work in networked, but memory constrained systems, such as sensor network nodes.

Releases

• Following nearly two years of development, the Gnumeric developers have announced the release of version 1.10.0 of their GNOME Office spreadsheet application. The first stable release in the 1.10.x series includes several changes, updates and improvements.

Government

• I read an interesting post last week by Morton Hansen (author of Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results) entitled Obama’s Five Collaboration Mistakes. In the comments below the post, some folks interpreted his words as an attack on the Obama administration. Me? I’d probably interpret Hansen’s words more broadly. Perhaps something like:

• Politicians are pretty darned bad at collaborating a lot of the time.

• india’s draft policy on the software platform for e-governance has made a concession for proprietary software businesses like Microsoft. Proponents of open-source software called it a major departure from the Union government’s earlier stand, saying allowing proprietary software in the standards will limit people who can e-access the government. At the heart of this controversy is a change in the ‘Recommended Policy on Open Standards for e-governance’.

Luminaries

• Copyrights used to expire after a few years; now some corporations want them to last forever to protect their revenue streams on copyrighted works. Stallman continues to influence this conversation with an eye toward protecting computer users’ freedom and making software more conducive to a genuine education.

• “The global corporations that profit from copyright are lobbying for draconian punishments for copyright violations and to increase their copyright powers while suppressing public access to technology,” says Stallman. “If we seriously hope to serve the only legitimate purpose of copyright– to promote progress for the benefit of the public — then we must make changes in the other direction.”

• The New Jersey Linux User’s group will present a film titled “Revolution OS” at the Darress Theatre in Boonton on Wednesday, March 31. This is a documentary detailing the roots of the Free Software and Open Source movements that resulted in Linux, as well as many other free software projects.

Openness

• Google is giving the Wikimedia Foundation a $2m donation, meaning the online fact dump can continue to serve up instant research to hard-pressed college students and broadcast researchers.

Programming

• Gitorious

• Pros: - Has the latest commits right up front, providing a good overview of what’s been happening and what’s available. - The wiki-type front pages are a bit easier to navigate. The whole site feels less cluttered than GitHub. - Much easier to see up front who’s part of a project and who’s cloned it.

• Cons: - Gitorious takes longer when searching for stuff; it’s also a little slower just to click through trees and links, like the Neuvoo project. - Business model? What business model? How are they gonna stay open on down the road? - Doesn’t seem to offer private repos, should I need one in the future.

• So, a few days back, I started with an idea of a periodic summary of what is going on around the Vala programming language, mainly for those subscribed to the mailing list who are not that much interested in bugzilla.

Leftovers

• Server distributor Oakville Mehlville Computers is offering the 12-core Opteron processor code-named Magny-Cours on its eBay auction site.

Lists

Security

• The French military deliberately exposed enlisted men to nuclear radiation in the Sahara Desert in 1961 in order to study resulting physical and psychological effects, according to a classified 1998 report published Tuesday by a French daily, Le Parisien.

• He was elected in part to drag us out of this trap. Instead, he’s dragging us further in

• Last month I announced a contest to redesign the TSA logo. Here are the finalists. Clicking on them will bring up a larger, and easier to read, version.

• Crime and policing minister David Hanson put forward five case studies to a select committee, but due to an “administrative error” one was a copy of one of the other cases with the name altered.

• The Metropolitan Police and Hackney Council have apologised after 83 people were searched in a churchyard while a funeral was being held.

• They were taken to a marquee put up in St John’s Churchyard, in Hackney, after being arrested elsewhere as part of an operation targeting youth knife crime.

• I learned in my time at the Bar that it is precisely when the odds are stacked against a defendant that he most needs the benefit of a fair justice system – that it is when the evidence is apparently strongest that the rule of law is most important. Megarry J said in John v Rees [1970] that the path of the law is strewn with examples of open and shut cases whcih, somehow, were not; of unnswerable charges which, in the event, were completely answered; of inexplicable conduct which was fully explained… Coughlin is not interested in those notions – of testing evidence by due process, of a fair trial acting as a buffer between the wrath of the people and the individual.

• A group of Women’s Institute members have been threatened with £80 fines for handing out flyers for a charity art exhibition.

• Grandmother Liz Day, 68, was confronted by a council litter warden who warned her and three other WI members it was illegal to hand out the charity adverts.

• The women were told they narrowly escaped an on-the-spot fixed penalty notice because the East Hertfordshire Council warden was in a ‘good mood’.

Environment

• Rep. Matt Wingard, who has a degree in broadcast journalism, admitted on Monday that he lifted his speech from an editorial entitled “Osama and Obama on global warming,” which sought to link Osama bin Laden’s recent declaration on global warming to the US president’s policies.

• President Obama, speaking to an enthusiastic audience of union officials in Lanham, Md., on Tuesday, underscored his embrace of nuclear power as a clean energy source, announcing that the Energy Department had approved financial help for the construction of two nuclear reactors in Georgia.

• It was one of the most expensive fish ever sold. A few weeks ago, a giant bluefin tuna achieved a price of 16.3m yen – about £111,000 – at auction in Tokyo. The rich, buttery taste of the tuna’s flesh made the 513lb fish irresistible for one group of restaurateurs. The bluefin’s fillets ended up on hundreds of sushi platters across Tokyo within hours of the sale.

Finance

• Greece’s embattled government will come under added pressure tomorrow to enforce even tougher austerity measures to combat the country’s debt at a meeting of EU finance ministers expected to focus solely on the crisis.

• Has the severely PR-challenged Goldman now aided one global crisis too many?

• Simmons, 64, who has been a director since 2000, will not stand for reelection at the company’s annual shareholder meeting later this spring, according to a statement from the New York-based investment firm.

• A dispute is unfolding about how long European Union officials have known that Greece used derivatives to conceal its growing budget deficit.

• Goldman wasn’t the only bank named, although it was clearly the villain of the piece. JPMorgan Chase had a supporting role for a round of stealth borrowing it was said to have arranged for Italy (there seems to be an inverse relationship among European nations between fiscal rectitude and olive oil production).

• Greece is turning into a battle royal between the global financial elites and the average worker in the industrial West. This started out as a more limited struggle, pitting the finance ministers and central banks of the European Union against the Greek unions, but the fight has unexpectedly broadened with news of the surreptitious involvement of Goldman Sachs in helping Greece avoid borrowing constraints.

• The picture painted in the Western financial press makes the unions the villain in this play. The unions are described as greedy, lazy, too quick to strike, and insensitive to the burdens they were imposing on the Greek economy. To cope with union threats and extortion, various Greek governments had no choice but to borrow excessively, and well beyond the European Union target range that allowed domestic budget deficits to be no higher than 3% of GDP. As of last year, Greece’s budget deficit was 12.7% of GDP.

• [...]

• The answer to that is a corrupt, broken, secretive, and exploitative international financial system – one that grants enormous power and wealth to a handful of private sector firms. This is the reality the citizens of Greece – not just the unions – are now facing. It is a reality that justifiably will create disgust and anger among the people of Greece, who may well reject the shock therapy being offered by the EU finance officials, thereby calling their bluff. If so, it will be the second rebuff of the international financial elites, following the rejection of austerity measures by Iceland to repay its debt.

• EU officials are still talking and acting as if they have matters under control, and their pronouncements carry the weight of law. They may be about to find out otherwise, and if so, the global financial system and global markets are in for an economic version of shock and awe.

• While the younger generation, very visibly led by Lloyd C. Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, lobbies Congress against such regulation, their spiritual elders support the reform proposed by Paul A. Volcker and, surprisingly, even more restrictions. “I am a believer that the system has gone badly awry and needs massive reform,” said Mr. Bogle, the 80-year-old founder and for many years chief executive of the Vanguard Group, the huge mutual fund company.

• If you weren’t making things 100 years ago, you’d be dead. Your home, your food, your clothes and even your toys were all made by you or someone you knew. Somewhere along the way, humans seem to have forgotten that we were makers, and instead became consumers.

• Now, when some people build, sew and bake they are making a conscious choice to return to our maker roots. This movement is MakerCulture. Today, makers challenge the mainstream and make instead of buy.

• With the federal government, massive cost overruns are the rule, not the exception. The $700 billion cost of the war in Iraq dwarfs the $50 billion to $60 billion that Mitch Daniels, then director of the Office of Management and Budget, predicted at the outset. In 1967 long-run forecasts estimated that Medicare would cost about $12 billion by 1990. In reality, it cost more than $98 billion that year. Today it costs $500 billion.

• Due to massive construction projects associated with the Olympics, from venues to infrastructure, there is both widespread environmental destruction, as well as huge public debts. As part of security operations, police, military, and intelligence agencies receive millions of dollars for new personnel, equipment, weapons, et cetera—strengthening the creeping police states we see around the world (and south of the border) and further eroding our alleged “freedoms” and civil liberties.

• PROTEST ORGANISER: You know, you probably heard these base rumours that they spent $6, $7 billion on the Olympics, the OWElympics, O.W.E lympics. We are the Poverty Olympics – our budget wasn’t quite that – they’re probably looking at $6 billion, we’re $6. Look what we’re doing; what we’re doing on six bucks that’s so great.

• LISA MILLAR: A loose coalition of anti-Olympic, anti-global, anti-poverty protesters are threatening to derail the Games.

• Today was the first taste of what they say will be weeks of noisy rallies, street marches and attempts to block spectators and competitors.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• The lucky hire, who will have to run the White House’s Twitter, Facebook and Myspace accounts, should have, “Excellent writing and editing skills with strong attention to detail; your writing is strong, sharp, and personable,” which makes us wonder what blogs, tweets and Facebook pages he has been looking at as comparisons.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Google and Yahoo! have joined a pressure group which seeks to stop Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s doomed attempt to filter Aussie web traffic.

• [...]

• It is also concerned that Conroy’s mandatory filer will include content that is educational or social. Trials last year did wrongly blacklist websites promoting a Queensland dentist, a photographer and a travel agent.

• Finally, the group warned that sites like YouTube, which is bound to have some pages on the filter blacklist, would effectively overload the filter and create bottlenecks.

• A class action lawsuit has been filed against Facebook over changes that the social networking site made to its privacy settings last November and December.

• With the Super Bowl just concluded and baseball’s spring training only weeks away, a question occurred to us: whatever happened to the push for copyright holders to tone down their copyright notices?

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Google’s recently announced plan to set up trial fiber optic networks in the US with ultra-high speed Internet connections puts the long running national debate over Net Neutrality back into high gear.

• A hot topic of discussion and debate in government and telecom circles since at least 2003, Net Neutrality, actually involves a broad array of topics, technologies and players

• Canadian Internet service providers fall short on net neutrality rules, testing CRTC’s patience.

• I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m very much against enforcing net neutrality through legislation (too many unintended consequences) but I’m stunned at the ridiculous and totally bogus reasons given by those fighting against those regulations in support of their claims. The latest on this front is Stephen Titch, a policy analyst at the Reason Foundation (a group whose work I usually think is quite good), coming out with a policy brief making the ludicrous argument that network neutrality would mean no more iPhones.

Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

• The whole thing makes no sense at all. Warner Bros. mistakenly thinks that if people can’t rent a particular DVD in the first four weeks of release, they’re more likely to shell out money to actually buy the DVD. This is Warner Bros. pretending that it can influence customer behavior by denying them what they want.

• Lower licensing fees and more selective video game companies could be bad news for some music companies. Video games have provided a boost to licensing revenues and overall awareness for many artists. But sales are down sharply. An analyst with Wedbush Securities estimated, that two-thirds of December’s 12% year-over-year decline in video game sales came from the music category.

• The general topics for copyright change are to:

• 1) strengthen fair use, including reforming outrageously high statutory damages, which deter innovation and creativity; 2) reform the DMCA to permit circumvention of digital locks for lawful purposes; 3) update the limitations and exceptions to copyright protection to better conform with how digital technologies work; 4) provide recourse for people and companies who are recklessly accused of copyright infringement and who are recklessly sent improper DMCA take-down notices; and 5) streamline arcane music licensing laws to encourage new and better business models for selling music.

• In order to step up the pressure on illicit file-sharers and others that violate intellectual property laws, Swedish police and prosecutors are heading up a new specialist team of investigators to deal with infringements. Team members will be designated their own areas but will also be able to operate nationally.

• There’s only a few hours left to submit your comments to the US Trade Representative opposing export of draconian copyright restrictions to other countries.

• A lot of people have been incorrectly claiming that these comments are about ACTA, but they’re not. The Special 301 report basically just tries to determine which countries the US should put more pressure on to “get with the program,” diplomatically speaking, when it comes to copyright issues. In the past, it’s been used to bully countries like Canada and Israel — both of which have strong copyright that is very much in compliance with international obligations.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the DayChristian Einfeldt’s DTP presentation in Berlin 2004 05 (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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