● 03.26.10

● Links 26/3/2010: Mobinnova Dumps Windows for Linux, Miro 3.0 Gains Subtitles

Posted in News Roundup at 5:54 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Audiocasts

• If you’re a recent Linux convert, you’ve probably noticed you cannot install iTunes on your new system. That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your favorite podcasts anymore – there is plenty of Linux podcast software available that are capable of managing and downloading podcasts.

• Rhythmbox, Banshee and Amarok all include built-in podcast management, as do a number of other Linux media library applications. I’m not interested in using my music player to download music, however I want a program that does podcasts and only podcasts. If you feel the same way keep reading – here are three lightweight podcast managers for Linux.

• This week on Linux Outlaws: Mini-review of the new Crunchbang, is the Palm Pre dead?, Nexuiz is forked, lots of Microsoft sillyness and a Steve Jobs cheese sculpture…

Desktop

• As Laptop Magazine recently discovered, Mobinnova, an upstart smartphone and soon-to-be notebook producer, has dropped Windows CE in favor of Android for its upcoming Mobinnova Beam.

• Igel announced a new all-in-one thin client that runs Linux. The UD9 includes a 21.5-inch display, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, plus an optional touchscreen, wireless networking, and a smart card reader, the company says.

• Yes, make no mistake. You can have all the advantages: cost effectiveness, speed, a clever use of hardware resources. But where the migrations fail, it is in human beings. And how does this happen??

Kernel Space

Applications

• FatRat comes with many very interesting options. For one, it can download from HTTP(S)/FTP, RapidShare free and even YouTube. But FatRat can also download torrents, (it has BitTorrent support) has RSS feed support + special functions for TV shows and podcasts, support for SOCKS5 and HTTP proxies and even remote control via Jabber and a web interface and of course, a scheduler. FatRat has way to many options to list them here so check it out for yourself by installing FatRat (instructions further down).

• First off you need to download Memtest and I would suggest burning the bootable ISO image onto a CD. That is perhaps the easiest way to use Memtest. Owing to its popularity and usefulness, Memtest is also included on a number of Live CDs including the likes of Ubuntu and System Rescue CD.

Instructionals

• Booting. Sometimes it seems like it takes forever. What’s the computer doing all that time? How do you find out?

• The Linux boot sequence is surprisingly simple, and the best part is that almost all of it is controlled by shell scripts you can read — and even edit yourself.

• While TiddlyWiki is probably the most popular desktop wiki out there, it’s not the only fish in the sea. And if you don’t fancy TiddlyWiki’s approach to managing content, or you are looking for a desktop wiki that can help you to manage not only your notes but also appointments and contacts, then you might want to try Wiki in a Jar.

Distributions

New Releases

• The best, refined blend of GNU/Linux, coming with bleeding edge edges is eventually here! Say hello to Sabayon Five-point-Twoh, available in both GNOME and KDE editions!

Debian Family

• Can you install Debian with the live image? I’m not sure you can. There is some talk about modifying the running live system to invoke the installer, but it looks like you’re better off grabbing a Squeeze image and creating a real Debian install disc, whether it be the first full CD, a DVD or even Blu-ray image, or a much-smaller network-install or business-card install image (the latter two which I favor, since the newest packages are pulled from the repository and you don’t need to do a massive update right out of the box).

Ubuntu

• It’s true, I’ve given Ubuntu a thrashing from time to time, but it was deserved. (See Hey Ubuntu, Stop Making Linux Look Bad and Two Simple Suggestions for Ubuntu) Now, it deserves a little of something else.

• Last week the first Beta of Ubuntu 10.04 was released, providing a solid glimpse of what will comprise the final release in a month’s time. It looks damn good.

• I have the beta of the latest Ubuntu on a spare partition on my HD, mainly out of curiosity. My impressions in one sentence:

• “Looks okay, but it’s not for me.”

• Basically, the same reaction as I have to Windows 7 and Mac OS X.

• The install was fast and painless, boot times up to GDM were quick (quicker than my main Arch install, even), but Ubuntu’s GNOME is as slow as ever and starts a load of services I don’t need (bluetooth? I don’t even have bluetooth hardware in my PC), but deselecting them doesn’t seem to make any difference.

• With the new application icon and splash screen, these new buttons and a bevvy of win in the feature set Guayadeque continues to impress.

• It’s one small step for Dell, and one big strategic win for Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux cloud strategy. Specifically, Dell on March 24 said it would support Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) as an infrastructure solution. Apparently, Canonical and Dell have been developing this UEC relationship for more than six months. Here are the details and the implications for channel partners.

• Looking at this list it makes me wonder if I have a good reason to stick with Ubuntu, and the conclusion is I don’t, I could switch to an alternative distribution, DEB based, RPM based, Slackware or any other kind that’s out there but I like to think I give back to the Ubuntu community by way of my How to compile your custom Kernel articles and my Git repository. For now I’ll stick with Ubuntu and yes I will be updating to Lucid Lynx when it comes out.

• Last week we published benchmarks looking at the ATI Radeon KMS vs. UMS performance and found the user-space mode-setting support with the ATI driver (that is also limited to using DRI1 with these older code-paths) to perform significantly faster than the newer kernel mode-setting routes in most instances. To see how the performance difference is on the Intel side between the kernel mode-setting and user-space mode-setting implementations we ran a set of benchmarks on this side as well using Ubuntu 10.04.

Devices/Embedded

• Franklin Wireless Corp. announced two mobile WiFi hotspot routers based on embedded Linux that each weigh only 2.46 ounces. The R526 shares CDMA 1x EVDO Rev. A+ bandwidth with WiFi clients while the R536 WiMAX Wave II shares WiMAX connectivity, says the company.

• Opengear announced a new version of its Linux-based ACM5000 line of serial device servers, claimed to be the first to offer remote monitoring over 3G cellular network devices. The ACM5004-G is equipped with four serial ports, an Ethernet port, and a USB port, and supports EDGE, GPRS, GSM, HSDA and HSUPA networks.

Android

• …4G smartphone slated to come to market, the Android-powered handset boasts some serious specs, which is fueling a frenzy of positive posts in the days since it was unveiled. A full list of HTC Evo 4G features is at the Sprint Web site, but the features making the geeks go ga-ga include: Android 2.1 OS, a QualComm SnapDragon 1Ghz processor, a 4.3-inch touchscreen, HTC Sense UI, 8-megapixel auto-focus camera with HD-capable video camcorder and a forward-facing 1.3-megapixel camera, built-in mobile hotspot functionality allowing for eight wireless devices, live video sharing with Qik, 1GB of built-in memory and 512 MB RAM, in addition to all the typical smartphone specs we’ve come to expect.

• Open Kernel Labs (OK Labs) announced the availability of a mobile virtualization reference platform for its Android version of the OKL4 microkernel hypervisor (“Microvisor”). The Android “One Core” platform appears to be the first implementation of version 4.0 of OKL4, which offers security and performance enhancements, says the company.

Sub-notebooks

• Fusion Garage is shipping a the Linux-based tablet formerly known as the CrunchPad. Rights to the “JooJoo” are still being legally contested by TechCrunch, which claims to have co-developed the device, but the 12.1-inch tablet is available anyway for $500, complete with a 4GB solid state drive (SSD), WiFi, Bluetooth, and a nine-second boot-time.

Free Software/Open Source

• The category of collaboration software is growing and changing quickly, encompassing fields like CRM dashboards, enterprise intelligence and analytics. In this category, the very nature of open source software gives it a clear advantage. It doesn’t seek to own the platform, the protocol, the exchange format or the community.

• Open source is no longer considered the wild underdog, but it will need more new companies making money off the trend, the one-time CEO of MySQL stressed Wednesday at the EclipseCon 2010 conference.

• Miro, the open source Internet TV / podcast downloader and player, has been updated to version 3.0 and is now able to display embedded or standalone subtitles for videos. When a video is playing in Miro 3, a drop down menu displays any automatically located subtitles. Alternatively, the user can select their own subtitle files.

Mozilla

• 2. Extensions

• Part of Mozilla’s appeal is its library of extensions. Users can easily find extensions ranging from business integration to social networks that extend the functionality of the browser far beyond its default installation. Extensions can’t be underestimated. If users can find value in their extensions, they won’t leave Firefox. It’s a major advantage to have as Microsoft is losing its own users.

• 3. It’s open source

• Although the average, mainstream user might not care about Mozilla being open source, it really does matter. Open-source software is widely considered superior to closed applications, thanks to the ability for the entire community to work on improving a single piece of software. Closed software, like Internet Explorer, is a different story altogether. Since it’s closed software that only Microsoft can work on, it lacks the benefit of having thousands of eyes working on improving it. The browser is also a major target for hackers.

Oracle

• Oracle’s decision to limit Solaris 10′s free usage to 90 days could be a boon for Linux vendors

• Recent changes to Solaris licensing could further encourage Solaris 10 users to consider Linux — and result in fewer new users considering Solaris at all. If you’re a Solaris customer, don’t overlook this license change.

BSD

• The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team this week put out the FreeBSD 7.3 release which is about four months after FreeBSD 8 was released.

• FreeBSD is known as a solid, stable and reliable open source operating system. It should come as no surprise then that many users of FreeBSD don’t jump to the next major version number right when it becomes available, but rather stay with the legacy version for a while.

FSF/FSFE/GNU

• Project GNU urges people working on free software to follow standards and guidelines for universal accessibility on GNU/Linux and other free operating systems. Multi-platform projects should use the cross platform accessibility interfaces available that include GNU/Linux distributions and the GNOME desktop. Project GNU also advises developers of web sites to follow the guidelines set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative.

Standards/Consortia

• There’s been a lot of talk lately about HTML5 and whether Flash is in it for the long haul. Word on the street is that HTML5 will be able to deliver rich content without the need for a proprietary plugin clogging up your Web browser.

Leftovers

• Such patients have difficulty processing social emotions such as empathy or embarrassment, but “they have perfectly intact capacity for reasoning and other cognitive functions,” says Young.

• A 2007 study by Damasio, Young and their colleagues showed that such patients are more willing than non-brain-damaged adults to judge killing or harming another person as morally permissible if doing so would save others’ lives. That led the researchers to suspect that the brain-damaged patients lacked appropriate emotional responses to moral harms and relied instead on calculating, rational approach to moral dilemmas.

• A Russian awarded $1million (£666,000) for solving one of the most intractable problems in mathematics said yesterday that he does not want the money.

• Said to be the world’s cleverest man, Dr Grigory Perelman, 44, lives as a recluse in a bare cockroach-infested flat in St Petersburg. He said through the closed door: ‘I have all I want.’

• The prize was given by the U.S. Clay Mathematics Institute for solving the Poincare Conjecture, which baffled mathematicians for a century. Dr Perelman posted his solution on the internet.

• Four years ago, the maths genius failed to turn up to receive his prestigious Fields Medal from the International Mathematical Union for solving the problem.

• At the time he stated: ‘I’m not interested in money or fame. I don’t want to be on display like an animal in a zoo.

• When his wife was diagnosed with a hereditary disease, Peter Johnson wanted to help. Using a program called Folding @ Home, he found a way to make a difference — by doing genetic research on his home computer. Due to the sensitive nature of his wife’s illness, Peter requested that his last name is changed for the purpose of this story to protect his family’s privacy.

• I really really really wasn’t going to write this post, but so many people kept submitting it, I figured it needed to be done. The Telegraph has some ridiculous story claiming, without any actual evidence, that Facebook is “linked to the rise in syphilis.” Quite a claim. The evidence? Oh, that’s not included.

• [...]

• So, yes, you have a bit of weak correlation combined with self-selected anecdotal bias. And that proves what? Uh, absolutely nothing.

• If you tell your browser to ignore certain things on a website, that should be your choice. This add-on is there to help people who want it, such that it makes Facebook more useful to them. It’s too bad that as Facebook gets bigger, we’re hearing more and more stories of this kind of bullying activity.

Security

• INTERNET SEARCH GIANT Google has added some rudimentary geolocation technology to thwart Gmail hackers.

• Pavni Diwanji, engineering director at Google, blogged that your Gmail account will automatically notify you if there’s any suspicious activity.

• IN WHAT MUST BE bad news for Gary McKinnon’s defence team a US court has dismissed Asperger’s syndrome as a hacking defence and thrown the book at Albert Gonzalez.

• At present it is the NHS patient records system that is muddled between paper and online records – but this could change very soon. As we make clear in the report, the Government’s National Programme for IT (NPfIT) is slowly rolling-out across the country at great expense and, as was revealed by the British Medical Association (BMA) earlier this month, with very little regard for patient privacy.

• To read about the full horrors of this system, please do head to The Big Opt Out – the website of the NHS Confidentiality campaign, which was set up to protect patient confidentiality and to provide a focus for patient-led opposition the government’s NHS Care Records System.

• Mekki sez, “The city of Ottawa has launched a security campaign funded by Transport Canada (federally) that asks people to report any ‘suspicious behaviour’, which includes photographers and sketchers. They explicitly list ‘An individual taking photos or pictures [...], drawing maps or sketches’ as things to report. My friend Sarah Gelbard teaches in the Architecture department at Carleton University in Ottawa. She had her students do a project on transit in the city last year. They all went to transit stations and took reference pictures to help plan out their projects. Security stopped and questioned several of them. And this was before this new campaign. I’m afraid what might happen now if people started calling in the “suspicious behaviour” of students taking photos of a transit station.”

Environment

• For nearly 30 years, India and Bangladesh have argued over control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have resolved the dispute for them: the island’s gone.

• Heartland, a N.J.-based provider of credit and debit card processing services said that unknown intruders had broken into its systems sometime last year and planted malicious software to steal card data carried on the company’s networks. The company, which is among the largest payment processors in the country, claimed to have discovered the intrusion only last week after being alerted by Visa and MasterCard of suspicious activity.

• China has sent 1.4m tonnes of emergency grain supplies to drought-stricken southern provinces that are struggling to cope with the worst drought in decades, the local media reported today.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• The Sydney Morning Herald reported that 147 comments were submitted to the government on its proposal to begin blocking certain Web sites – particularly those that present harm to children.

• Over the last few years, WikiLeaks has been the subject of hostile acts by security organizations. In the developing world, these range from the appalling assassination of two related human rights lawyers in Nairobi last March (an armed attack on my compound there in 2007 is still unattributed) to an unsuccessful mass attack by Chinese computers on our servers in Stockholm, after we published photos of murders in Tibet. In the West this has ranged from the overt, the head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, threatening to prosecute us unless we removed a report on CIA activity in Kosovo, to the covert, to an ambush by a “James Bond” character in a Luxembourg car park, an event that ended with a mere “we think it would be in your interest to…”.

Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

• Thanks to the recent PRO-IP Act, the US has for the first time has an “Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator” responsible for pulling together all the resources of the federal government. What should the IPEC be doing with her time and resources? The “core content industries” have an answer: she should turn the online world from a “thieves’ bazaar to a safe and well-lit marketplace” by encouraging network admins to deploy bandwidth shaping, site blocking, traffic filters, watermark detectors, and deep packet inspection.

• Perhaps the most common mistake that paywall supporters make is forgetting that people haven’t paid for the news in 180 years. Newspaper readers used to pay for paper, ink, trucks and delivery boys—and often barely paid enough to cover that bill. Now they pay for internet connections instead. Then and now, the reader only pays for access—advertising always has and will continue to pay for everything else.

• How exactly Hammonton will enforce a copyright of a public meeting baffles this author, but looks forward to seeing the explanation in Council. Remember, any production by the Town of Hammonton is paid for by public dollars and owned by the public.

ACTA/Digital Economy Bill

• The much-criticized cloak of secrecy that has surrounded the Obama administration’s negotiation of the multilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was broken Wednesday. The leaked draft of ACTA belies the U.S. trade representative’s assertions that the agreement would not alter U.S. intellectual property law. And it raises the stakes on the constitutionally dubious method by which the administration proposes to make the agreement binding on the United States.

• After speaking with people in or close to the negotiations, European Commission and Spanish Presidency of the EU, this is some of what I have gathered despite dealing with very tight-lipped people:

• 1. The negotiations are not going that well and many issues are still wide open. It is doubtful they could wrap up soon.

• 2. There is a significant problem in making US and EU legislation compatible on a number of issues. One of the important topics of contention, but not the only one, is probably the differences between US “fair use” and the “commercial scale”, term the EU negotiators seem adamant on leaving very ambiguous to be interpreted later a la carte, even with all the risks involved.

• As well they should. This is a point that we’ve raised repeatedly, noting not just the similarities between the methods used for censorship in authoritarian countries and ACTA, but also in the way that those countries will almost certainly use ACTA to justify their own censorship.

• The controversial digital economy bill will be pushed through in the “wash-up” leading up to an election, after the government confirmed that it will receive its second reading in the Commons on 6 April – the same day that Gordon Brown is expected to seek Parliament’s dissolution.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the DayWhere’s Microsoft? (2005)Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

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