● 05.10.10

● Links 10/5/2010: Loads of GNU/Linux Gaming News, Mandriva Rumours

Posted in News Roundup at 4:28 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Comparisons

• Last week we delivered the first of our Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu 10.04 benchmarks to much anticipation, but now we have the results for Apple’s Mac OS X 10.6.3 operating system to tack in too. In the first part of that Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu Linux performance examination, we looked closely at the OpenGL gaming performance across six different systems and a whole slew of tests. More articles are on the way looking at the performance and later in the week we already delivered some initial disk benchmarks. However, now it is time to see how Microsoft Windows 7 Professional x64, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and Apple Mac OS X 10.6.3 compete with one another.

• sentvid passed me a linkto his admittedly “not very Scientific but end user perspective” boot race video that sees him pit clean installs of Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7 against one another.

Sony

• Sony is starting to come under serious fire over its latest Playstation 3 update (3.21), which saw the removal of the ‘Install other OS’ feature, and the denial of access to the Playstation Network and all online gaming for those that chose not to update (as is per the majority of PS3 updates). First came the class action lawsuit from Anthony Ventura of California, and now two more lawsuits have been levelled at Sony over the same issue.

• You shouldn’t act surprised to find out that Sony is being sued yet again over its decision to remove Linux support from its PS3 game console. Attorney Rebecca Call was the first lawyer to smell blood and find a disgruntled PS3 owner who was willing to file suit and go along with a class action status.

Server

• The supercomputer uses a blade design to scale to up to 65,536 compute nodes, the firm said, while its open x86 architecture makes it relatively easy to deploy commercial, open-source or custom applications on standard Novell SUSE or Red Hat Linux operating systems.

Audiocasts

• Full Circle Podcast #6: Mark’s Space Brain from the Future

Ballnux

Kernel Space

• While new stable kernel releases seem to have become somewhat less frequent, they now include more changes. Although the most recent version of AMD’s proprietary graphics drivers finally work with X Server 1.7, NVIDIA’s drivers already work with version 1.8. Videos of the Linux Audio Conference and the Collaboration Summit provide insights into audio and kernel topics.

• [...]

• A version of the proprietary GeForce driver, functional with X Server 1.8 after setting a special Xorg.conf option, was already available when the new X Server was released. Version 195.36.24 (x86-32, x86-64), which was released at the end of April, no longer requires this trick and also supports the GeForce GTX 470 and 480 models introduced in March.

Applications

• Ailurus is an open-source software that makes Ubuntu easier to use. With ailurus,you can manage system settings include nautilus,desktop,windows effect,network,sound,etc;you can install/remove applications which do not provide Debian packages at all;you can check you hardware information include motherboard,CPU,BIOS,Total memory;you can check the system version,desktop environment,host name,kernel version and so on;you can select the fastest repository,clean up system cache,study Linux skills …

• I know I tend to moan about a lot of things in my blog, sometimes I celebrate good work, well executed. Rarely do I get the opportunity to agree with the Ayatana/DX Ubuntu design direction. I may not agree with the group’s past choice of language communicating things to the community, but this is something I think it’s got mostly right.

• OK so what don’t I like about the old notification area? Well it’s an arbitrary parent-widget, this means that it’s a container for other widgets which are not internally defined but are defined outside. This results is very inconsistent behaviour and a real problem when your trying to keep tabs on design as a distro.

• Today we continue on with our Wallpaper theme! You’ve already seen how to Manage your wallpaper in GNOME as well as how to set up a changing rotation of wallpapers with Wallpaper Drapes (see “Desktop Drapes for GNOME“). Now it’s time for something a bit different. Most wallpaper applets pretty much do the same thing: They will either place a picture on your desktop or manage multiple pictures that will change at a set interval. For the most part there is little variation in these tools. But one such tool offers a single addition to the standard wallpaper manager that sets it apart. That tool is anyPaper. And that feature allows you to place your image anywhere on your desktop you like. For those that use icons on their desktop, this is actually a most welcome feature (you’ll understand in a bit). And, unlike most tools, AnyPaper actually offers you a preview of what your desktop will look like.

• There are a lot of things easier to do with a command line then with a graphical user interface. That’s not to say doing things with a command line is intuitive – no, you will need to learn how to use the tools – but it is easier – that is to say, quick and simple to remember. A powerful, easy-to-use command line is a huge part of what makes Linux so powerful.

Proprietary

• No biggie. I’ll just bop on over to Hulu™ and watch it there. BUZZZZZ! Wrong! It seems that Hulu™ is having an issue with 64 bit Linux and the Adobe Flash® plugin. Attempting to play the video gives me this warm and fuzzy notice:

Instructionals

• MySQL Server is a very powerful yet light and quick database engine. It is a widely spread standard among developers, capable of running fairly big databases in professional environments, but also very convenient for medium to small projects. In fact, it is about the latter I want to talk about in this article.

Games

• MMORPGs are really popular nowadays that they are played all over the world, and revenues are said to be more than US$1 billion a year since 2006. World of Warcraft (WoW) is currently the world’s most-subscribed MMORPG but its client only runs on Windows and Mac OS X platforms. So if you are using Linux, you may have to rely on Wine to play the game (see 10 Best Windows Games That Can Be Played on Linux). However, if you want to play MMORPGs that are native on Linux, check out this list that I’ve compiled…

• Just a few hours ago we reported on the progress by those within the Phoronix community working to get the Steam client running as much as possible based upon Valve’s Steam Linux binaries that are inconspicuously housed on their servers. By making some modifications to the Steam client binary and libraries, as of this morning they are up to the point of displaying the main Steam UI window. Just hours after that, the Steam Friends’ UI is now being partially drawn along with other windows.

• If you’re not already aware, Valve’s Steam client and Source Engine are coming to Linux. It’s something we have been talking about for weeks now along with those in the Phoronix community via our forums and IRC. If you’re not up-to-date on our coverage, read Investigating The Steam Linux Client Continues and Here’s The First Screenshot Of The Linux Steam Client. However, if you are up to speed, here is the newest screenshot exhibiting the latest progress to the Steam Linux client.

• The present is also much better then 5 years ago and we see constant improvement each year. I very much agree with David’s post, specially about the fact that most GNU/Linux ports came way after the original Windows release, which harms the sales and in many cases lowers the game “worth” (if the port is made several years after the Windows release for example, and yeah it did happen many times).

• Judging by that pie chart Linux users appear to make up almost 25% of the donations and their average donation amount is almost double that of the average Windows user donation. This means that of the 571,048$ donated thus far 142,762$ is from Linux users. But remember Linux users are cheap and their is no money in Linux game market – right.

• The Humble Indi Bundle is a revolutionary way of selling software which Wolfire Games are running for a week. It allows you to download a collection of great games (World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, LagaruHD, Penumbra-Overture) for a price that YOU decide. The games are available for Linux, Mac or Windows, contain no DRM and you can even choose how your donation is distributed.

• One of the reasons why people don’t shift to Linux platform is Gaming. Being having a large user-base, game titles are primarily programmed for Windows. Linux versions are available but only for handful of titles. WINE project has made it possible to play windows games on Linux but not without some anomalies. Due to such scenario, gaming under Linux has been limited. The Linux community has been aware of these problems infesting Linux adoption & have been encouraging developers to develop games for Linux.

• [...]

• The games bundled are a mix of 2D & 3D, some having simple gameplay while others more challenging. The game mix considered is almost perfect & showcases the best fro Open Source World in form of TORCS, Nexuiz etc. The distro is suited for varied age levels & hence will please everyone. The games should play fine on most of the machines having a decent graphic card. I had a great time playing on my 24 inch monitor at full HD settings cranking up all the details. Inspite of running off a live DVD the games didn’t lag or stutter even once. Sound was great but I could not test multi channel support as my speakers are not in a good shape but online testimonials of people suggest no problem in surround channel mode either. Once I got down to play, I was hooked. Small or big both types of games are extremely addictive & will come handy when you have loads or even a couple of free minutes at your disposal. Anybody who says Linux doesn’t offers good games should definitely try this distro. Offcourse it can’t be compared to biggies on Windows platform but all one expects from gaming is recreation & Linux Gamers Live offers just that. Happy Gaming!

• My today selection for Linux gamers are three nice opensource games, the games are

• * Go Ollie! : At first sight Go Ollie! looks like a game for kids, but once you play it you realize it can be fun for anyone, no matter what age. * Bos Wars : A futuristic real time strategy game (RTS) * Scorched 3D : A simple turn-based artillery game and also a real-time strategy game in which players can counter each others’ weapons with other creative accessories, shields and tactics.

• How do people pirate the bundle? When I say this bundle is DRM-free — I really mean DRM-free. Not only do the games themselves have no copy protection (not even a simple serial number check), but the Humble Indie Bundle website has limited copy protection. That means there are no download limits, everything is reachable on the command-line with ‘wget’, you can resume downloads, and do anything else you would expect to be able to do with a personal download link.

GNOME Desktop

• Gnome 3.0 is coming to give the Linux desktop a boost

• Gnome, the desktop environment favoured by the likes of Ubuntu Linux, is getting an overhaul. For users this means a number of things, including a new way of interacting with files and a new way of launching and managing applications.

• The existing Gnome desktop, version 2.x, is now close on eight years old.

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• Gnome 3.0 is expected to be released in September this year. It will most likely find its way into mainstream Linux releases from October onwards.

Distributions

• I had a lot of time available to myself over the past week, as you might have guessed by my relative proliferation of posts. Some of that time was spent distro-hopping, although I had plenty more things to write about than just the flavor of the day.

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• # Last but definitely not least, Slackware. Ah, Slackware. Slackware is the distro I really want to like, but every time I use it I am frustrated and befuddled and left feeling like a newb again. My run-in with Slax the other day was both the cause and the effect of trying out Slackware 13: I started with the Slax ISO, decided I wanted to build it from scratch with Slackware, became frustrated and then went back to Slax again. I know I need to try harder on this one; I shall have to look for some sort of howto that illustrates how to start at the command line and build up to a graphical environment, because that’s what I ultimately would like to do with Slack.

• CDlinux is a well-crafted mini-distro which manages to pack a lot of functionality into a small image. It has the ability to function as an on-the-road desktop for people who want to carry their operating system in their pocket and it also has tools, such as the partition imaging software, which make it a good rescue CD. It’s fairly light on resources, making CDlinux feel like a smaller version of KNOPPIX and additional functionality can be added to the distro using Slackware packages, making CDlinux suitable for a wider range of tasks. The only thing I felt missing was an option to install the distribution to the local hard disk. While this could be done manually, I’m looking forward to seeing it as a feature of the system’s graphical installer. I think CDlinux fits in nicely with the family of other small distributions, such as SliTaz GNU/Linux and Damn Small Linux in the mini-distro niche.

Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• PCLInuxOS 2010 has been released and is once again shinning at its best. Mylivecd is the new customized format of previous mklivecd and I wanted to give it a spin to make a remaster of my installed system. Though many report failure with remastering I managed to do it on my second attempt.

• Mandriva Linux, a distribution that was one of the first to understand the concept of user-friendliness on the desktop, is apparently for sale and in negotiations with two potential buyers. That’s according to some unconfirmed reports that appeared on the Internet over the weekend

Red Hat Family

• He then served as president and chief operating officer for JBoss, the world’s leading open source middleware company, where he also came in contact with Terry College’s Chris Hanks, a management faculty member and director of the college’s entrepreneurship program.

Debian Family

Ubuntu

• In the meantime, however, “I benefit because Debian can use Ubuntu packages with no problem,” Mack added. “I only wish the other distros would dump RPM and switch to .deb — there would be fewer packaging headaches.”

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 192 for the week May 2nd – 8th, 2010. In this issue we cover: Maverick is open for development, Call for Ubuntu User Days Instructors, Window indicators, New Ubuntu Regional Membership Boards, Maverick UDS Translations Sessions, Patch Day Success, Ubuntu Open Week en Español closes on high note, Ubuntu Open Week – Lucid: Community, Canonical, Collaboration, Call For Nominations: Ubuntu Women Leader Leadership Committee, Ubuntu Server and Apache Tomcat – supporting MuleSoft, Full Circle Podcast #6: Mark’s Space Brain from the Future, and much, much more!

• With the release of Ubuntu 10.04 I marked 5 years of Ubuntu usage and involvement.

• During these years there were UPs and DOWNs but in general I have to say, that I was right in 2005 to switch from Gentoo Linux to Ubuntu Linux.

• In 2005 Oliver Grawert gave me a Ubuntu 5.04 prerelease CD in my hand and told me I should try it, even when he knew that I was a Gentoo Linux addict. I tried it on my company laptop (HP NC6000) and it was working out of the box, without any glitches these days.

• And after this I started to work on Ubuntu and for Ubuntu. After my first “virtual” meeting with Mark I was convinced that Ubuntu has potential to overrule the big 2 distros (RH and SuSE). I dreamed about the possibility that we will have an enterprise ready Linux distribution for free.

• Once this is done, go ahead and enable desktop effects. If all went well, you should have all the compiz bells and whistles!

• Almost all types of hardware and configurations are compatible with Ubuntu, and Ubuntu includes a hardware checker to ensure that all your hardware is working as it should be. I would doubt this tool would be needed in most cases, as Ubuntu works out of the box most of the time, but it’s there should you need it.

• So there you have it, possibly the most consumer friendly version of Ubuntu yet. Yes, there’s a bit of a learning curve here and there (especially when installing programs, plug-ins) and you do start to miss the “wizard” to guide you through complex operations, but aside from that, Ubuntu makes a great Windows alternative for those of you who just want to get on with things.

• I’ve been quite happy with Lucid all in all. It’s a solid LTS release that incorporates a number of new features alongside impressive stability. If you haven’t upgraded yet, you’re missing out.

• Mark Shuttleworth, Founder, Canonical and Ubuntu Linux shared his thoughts with Srikanth RP on the increasing significance of open source, the roadmap for the cloud and why he thinks Ubuntu will succeed on the desktop, where other equally famed competitors have failed.

• Ivanka Majic, the Canonical design team manager, held a design team plenary in the auditorium at the Ubuntu Developer Summit where she talked about the design team as a whole, what they do and how they do it. As this is the first UDS that has a dedicated design track, many people in the community haven’t had a lot to do with the design team and perhaps are unsure of their inner workings.

• Notably, however, one of the data sets from the Ubuntu Forums implies that a not-insignificant portion of the community is older than 50. That conclusion is backed up by anecdotal evidence of the presence of seniors among a group where we might not expect to find many, given that they were contemplating retirement before Linux even hit the desktop.

• Different authors have written about why Linux can work for the elderly, and an “Ubuntu for Seniors” project has even been registered on Launchpad, although it appears dormant. Nonetheless, the retired crowd seems to be an important part of the Ubuntu demographic, even though it may often be overlooked.

Variants

• There are also parts of GNOME that I love, kubuntu

• Ubuntu still lacks a powerful desktop. KDE still lacks simple applications like the Ubuntu Software Center and commercial solutions like the Ubuntu One Music Store. Ubuntu could bring to KDE what it lacks, and vice-versa.

• The team behind the cloud-based Peppermint OS flavor of Linux announces the availability of Version 1.0 of the technology.

• The team behind the cloud-based Peppermint OS flavor of Linux has announced the availability of Version 1.0 of the technology.

• Indeed, in a news release and related material on the Peppermint OS Website, Shane Remington, a core member of the Peppermint development team as Web developer for the Peppermint OS, said Peppermint OS One will be available by noon on May 10. The OS had been in beta up to this point, but is now ready for prime time, he said.

• [...]

• For his part, Remington said Peppermint OS One is the only operating system shipping with Seesmic Web by default.

Devices/Embedded

• Four distributors have begun shipping the open platform, Linux-ready Hawkboard single board computer (SBC) for as low as $89. Based on the Texas Instruments OMAP-L138 system-on-chip (SoC), which combines an ARM9 core and a DSP, the community-driven Hawkboard project is structured on the TI-sponsored BeagleBoard project, and is similarly designed for hobbyists and general testing.

Sub-notebooks

• Unless you have a real reason to want XP (games… sigh), or OS X on non-Apple hardware (games… heh), you really are just setting yourself up for a headache down the road. Ubuntu installs fast, is very straightforward, small and netbook-friendly. Oh and there are even proprietary games for it these days too.

• I look forward to the day when $199 ARM-based netbooks with Ubuntu flood the market

• During a keynote at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Belgium, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth unveiled a new lightweight user interface shell called Unity. The new shell is designed to use screen space more efficiently and consume fewer system resources than a conventional desktop environment. It will be a key component of the Ubuntu Netbook Edition and a new instant-on computing platform called Ubuntu Light.

• The fruit of that R&D is both a new desktop experience codebase, called Unity, and a range of Light versions of Ubuntu, both netbook and desktop, that are optimised for dual-boot scenarios.

Free Software/Open Source

• Climate Lab, which has its roots in the problems the World Bank was having organizing the mounds of data it was collecting on climate change, is not only using open source tools to organize, collaborate and syndicate data, but the very data itself is open source.

• Open source software is the heart of many successful businesses, and like anything else has advantages and disadvantages. Depending on the client’s requirements and budget, iDES advises clients as to what technology to adopt.

• Furthermore, on its way to an Open Source vendor WeWebU works together with Prof. Dr. Dirk Riehle, leader of the OSR Group at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Thus, they quickly can integrate newest trends and research results into their development process. Prof. Dr. Riehle knows the advantages of an Open Source strategy: „We see that Open Source marketing and development models are ahead of traditional closed source approaches. Open Source allows software product companies to go to market faster with a better product and at lower costs.” With this method, WeWebU wants to be up-to-date and close to the users’ requirements as well.

• BlendELF is a work in progress, compact open source 3d game engine aimed towards independent game developers for quick prototyping and game / virtual environment creation.

• It’s very interesting that this is the case seeing as how the same phone has been rooted with 2.1. Or, even better, I read a post on another site of man who successfully ported Android 2.1 to an iPhone 2G. But what exactly does all of this have to do with open source? I knew you’d get to that question.

• If you swim with the open source fishes long enough you start seeing the patterns develop surrounding development – specifically bug fixes and update releases. Ubuntu is a perfect example. Every 6 months Canonical ships a new version of their distribution. Sometimes those releases are epic in scale (such as 9.10 to 10.04). Yet they still manage to get those releases out on time. And, as you continue to use that release, you find that updates come very shortly after a bug is discovered.

• Industry-wise, this week has seen a major acquisition announcement – over $1 billion – ABB taking Ventyx, as well as Honeywell (News – Alert)acquiring Akuacom. The latter is particularly interesting for the Open Source angle. Wearing my telecom hat, Open Source has been a big deal in the voice space, and it’s starting to find new homes, including smart grid. Followers of our portal will know there have been interesting developments this week on other fronts, such as wireless networks, electric vehicles and renewable energy initiatives.

• A guest post by Ms. Darlene Parker from Opentechexchange. Ms Parker is actively involved in the spread of Linux over here on the African continent. She is an expert in FOSS deployment.

Events

• Mobility, social media, open source and virtualization are four keys to productivity and cost savings, especially for small and mid-sized firms.

• This was the consensus of panelists who spoke at a recent roundtable organized by the Direct Engagement Show.

• Open source evangelist Obsidian Systems, in partnership with ITWeb, will host the next quarterly Free Beer Session, to explore the potential of open source solutions for organisations.

Mozilla

• The Mozilla developers have released the second beta for what will become version 3.1 of their popular open source Thunderbird email and news client, code named “Lanikai”. According to the developers, the development release is aimed at discovering “possible problems caused by the changes in the underlying platform”.

• Mitchell Baker, the woman behind Firefox, told Click that customisation tools such as add-ons have helped it take on the competition.

SaaS

• While there isn’t going to be a specific focus on open source at the new lab, it won’t be a surprise to see open source cloud advancements come from it.

• Servoy chose the AGPL as the license for this release because of its simplicity and openness. The AGPL license is approved by the Open Source Initiative, making it widely accepted with both corporations, governments and educational institutions.

Phipps

• That’s all fine in theory, but does it actually work? I intend to find out. Starting this week, I’m joining ForgeRock as chief strategy officer. They are a company building an enterprise integration and identity platform using some superb code that has been set aside in the acquisition of Sun by Oracle. Customers worldwide rely on OpenSSO; ForgeRock will be offering them the option to stay with it (renamed OpenAM for trademark reasons) rather than needing to re-architect their systems to use a different product.

Oracle

• The Free Software Foundation (FSF) announced yesterday a campaign to collect a clear list of OpenOffice.Org extensions that are FaiF, to convince the OO.o Community Council to list only FaiF extensions, and to find those extensions that are proprietary software, so that OO.o extension developers can focus of their efforts on writing replacements under a software-freedom-respecting license.

• The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced that it will maintain a list of free software extensions for the OpenOffice.org open source office suite. Discussing the announcement, FSF executive director Peter Brown said, “OpenOffice.org is free software, and an important contribution to the free software community. However, the program offers the user a library of extensions, and some of them are proprietary. Distributing OpenOffice.org in the usual way has the effect of offering users the non-free extensions too.”

• [...]

• The OpenOffice.org Community Council has since responded to the FSF, saying that they “believe passionately that FOSS delivers better software – including extensions, but that users must be free to make the comparison and reach their own conclusion,” adding that, the council “regrets that the FSF was unable to accept our compromise proposals for a more clearly signposted extensions repository.”

• When I was freshly elected at the OpenOffice.org’s Community Council the Free Software Foundation approached us with a question related to our extensions web site. Basically they felt that we should not be hosting non Free Software extensions and requested we take those down otherwise they would open their own extensions site.

CMS

Education

• Koha is the world’s first open source system for managing libraries (the books and periodical variety, that is), and one of the most successful. In the ten years since its first release, Koha has expanded from serving as the integrated library system (ILS) at a single public library in New Zealand to more than 1000 academic, public, and private libraries across the globe. But the past twelve months have been divisive for the Koha community, due to a familiar source of argument in open source: tensions between community developers, end users, and for-profit businesses seeking to monetize the code base. As usual, copyrights and trademarks are the legal sticks, but the real issue is sharing code contributions.

Government

• In addition, the Conservatives propose to bring in a £100m cap on IT contracts so that the largest and riskiest contracts are broken up into smaller components. This will open up the market to small and open-source companies, which the party believes will benefit the taxpayer because it is cheaper.

Health

• A blue-chip information technology industry recommended the Veterans Affairs Department reengineer its decade-old electronic health record system based on open source models and offered as the international standard for hospitals.

• The recommendations have implications for the Obama administration’s push for a national network for health records, which faces a roadblock of incompatible systems nationwide. Open source theoretically could provide a solution.

• “We think the standardization generated by VistA 2.0 will actually enhance the adoption of Connect and use of the NHIN,” Meagher said, who also envisioned VistA 2.0 as a “guide star,” around which users could steer the development of the NHIN.

Licensing

• Aleman said he chose the AGPL as the license for this release because of its simplicity and because of the hosted nature of many Servoy-based programs. The AGPL requires source code be made available for derivative works that are hosted as a network service. Thus, the AGPL encourages ISVs hoping to build software-as-a-service applications to engage with companies like Servoy for a commercial license.

Openness

• Open source hardware, aka open hardware, is an extension of the open source culture. Hardware that is designed for free, in the same way as open source software, is known as open source hardware or open hardware. The research and development information, like schematics, bill of materials (BOM) and PCB layout of an open source hardware design is open to all.

Leftovers

Finance

• Membership in the EU comes at a price. That price is a limit on deficits. This aspect of the EU treaty was meant to insure the solvency of its member nations and so support the Euro currency itself. No member can unilaterally revalue its currency as it is, by treaty, an abstraction of the net worth of the various member’s ability to back it. This severely limits the unilateral options for dealing with sovereign debt by member countries, which in turn opened up unusual opportunities for member countries to be exploited by international banking.

• While there are treaty limits on debt incurred by member countries, there are no constraints on banks lending to them. What evolved in the Greek sovereign debt crisis is a massive short opportunity on the Euro, had you known it was developing. And who would know outside of Greek government and the banking and finance community like Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan?

• The shorts circled like sharks in the Greek bond market, following a highly suspicious downgrade of Greek debt by Moody’s on Monday. Ratings by private ratings agencies, long suspected of being in the pocket of Wall Street, often seem to be timed to cause stocks or bonds to jump or tumble, causing extreme reactions in the market. The Greek downgrade was unexpected because the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund had just pledged 120 billion Euros to avoid a debt default in Greece. Strategically-timed ratings downgrades of this sort are so suspicious that Indian market regulator SEBI recently created a stir by asking the rating agencies operating in India for periodic reporting concerning their fees and rating norms.

• Markets were roiled further on Thursday, when the U.S. stock market suddenly lost 999 points, and just as suddenly recovered two-thirds of that loss. It appeared to be such a clear case of tampering that Maria Bartiromo blurted out on CNBC, “That is ridiculous. This really sounds like market manipulation to me.”

• The fear that began in Athens, raced through Europe and finally shook the stock market in the United States is now affecting the broader global economy, from the ability of Asian corporations to raise money to the outlook for money-market funds where American savers park their cash.

• Years of national denial about looming bankruptcy have turned to resentment as Greece is told how it must tackle its debt crisis

• German Chancellor Angela Merkel abandoned hopes Monday of pushing through tax cuts for Europe’s biggest economy after what she called a “bitter defeat” in an election overshadowed by the Greek debt crisis. She said her government would now concentrate on keeping Germany’s debt down.

• The UK has been so immersed in political fever that another highly significant election has gone almost unnoticed. When Germans go to the polls in state elections today, at stake will be not only the future of Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition in Berlin, but also the direction of Europe’s biggest economy.

• The European parliament is expected to toughen regulations for hedge funds and private equity despite UK and US opposition

• European leaders agreed on Monday to provide a huge rescue package of nearly $1 trillion in a sweeping effort to combat the debt crisis that has engulfed Europe and threatened markets around the world.

• Having waged a battle against financial mayhem for the past two years, the Federal Reserve is tentatively declaring victory. As it guaranteed debt and swapped cash for all sorts of assets, the Fed’s balance sheet grew — from about $850 billion in assets before the crisis to about $2.3 trillion this spring. The binge included the purchase of $1.25 trillion of mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

• Fannie Mae has again asked taxpayers for more money – this time $8.4 billion – after reporting another steep loss for the first quarter. The taxpayer bill for rescuing Fannie and its sibling Freddie Mac has grown to $145 billion – and the final tally could be much higher.

• But Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) remained on the deserted Senate floor last Tuesday evening, looking sullen. The Senate had just approved July 9, 2010, as “Collector Car Appreciation Day.” What it had not done for days was make headway on a 1,400-page bill to overhaul the nation’s financial regulations.

• Payday lenders and check cashers blanketed Capitol Hill last week to challenge the scope of the financial reforms under debate in Congress and combat the industry’s reputation as the pariahs of the financial system.

• During the “Hill Blitz” organized by the Financial Service Centers of America, a trade group, about 40 industry executives pushed to exempt check cashing from the purview of a proposed bureau that would oversee consumer financial products. Meanwhile, Democrats launched a new effort to contain the industry by limiting the number of payday loans that consumers can take out.

• A move to break up major Wall Street banks failed Thursday night by a vote of 61 to 33.

• Three Republicans, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John Ensign of Nevada, voted with 30 Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, in support of the provision. The author of the pending overall financial reform bill in the Senate, Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, voted against it. (See the full roll call.)

• The one main benefit to the financial reform effort so far is that it helps further do away with the false paradigms of “left” or “right” and “Democrat” or “Republican” – fewer and fewer people are falling for those lies anymore. Try to get an ideological conservative to explain why Republicans love spending and so eagerly give welfare to banks. Try to get your local liberal to explain why it was a good idea to make backroom deals with abhorrent corporations and drill, baby, drill. Heck, even try to get a Tea Partier to explain choosing bailout-lover Sarah Palin to keynote their convention, especially when that movement once had at least some pre-astroturf roots in protesting government giveaways.

• The essence of his piece was that Wall Street lobbyists had been banking on the Financial Regulatory Reform bill getting pared down behind closed doors as it got closer to a vote. Over the course of 900 words or so Dennis quoted one lobbyist after another talking about how politicians were getting too emotional about this whole ruined-economy thing, and were proceeding with “crazy” and “insanely unproductive” proposals.

• Most of us dislike the official poverty lines used to determine who, exactly, qualifies as poor. Most of us can recite at least five reasons why these measures (based on a mid-1960s assessment of the costs of a minimal food budget) are narrow, out of date and downright misleading.

• To make mattes worse, all this gambling is currently supported by the Federal Reserve and backed by the taxpayer guarantee. If I lose my money when Angelina has her kid, I lose. When the big bank bids go awry, the taxpayer can be stuck with the bill in the form of big bank bailouts. As financial reform advances in the Senate, it’s clear that the top priority for legislator is to make banking boring again.

• Investigators seeking an explanation for the brief stock market panic last week said Sunday that they were focusing increasingly on how a controlled slowdown in trading on the New York Stock Exchange, meant to bring about stability, instead set off uncontrolled selling on electronic exchanges.

• The Federal Reserve late Sunday opened a program to ship U.S. dollars to Europe in a move to head off a broader financial crisis on the continent.

• The Obama administration has sent Congress a proposal to create a $30 billion support program to unfreeze credit for the nation’s small businesses.

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