● 06.16.10

● Links 16/6/2010: No Android for Nokia; Sidux 2010-01

Posted in News Roundup at 5:48 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• Some people who favor widespread switches to Linux feel that it could put inexpensive laptops in the hands of kids, and help usher in more paperless schoolwork, which might be a money saver. One thing’s for sure: There is enough disagreement about Linux in schools that probably the best way to experiment with the idea is for teachers and administrators to try test cases with Linux on their own. As Cassidy reports, some teachers in cash-strapped school systems are already doing just that. Sometimes it’s surprising how much impact a technology decision made at the departmental level can really have.

Server

• Cloud Linux Inc., an innovative software company dedicated to serving the needs of hosting service providers, announces that it is a finalist in the 2010 Cloud Computing World Series Awards. Cloud Linux is featured in the “Best Start-Up” category, which recognizes companies that were founded after January 2009 and provide a cloud-based product or service in the cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) market. CloudLinux is a new commercially supported operating system proven to increase server density, stability and performance, helping customers realize reduced operating costs and increased profitability.

Ballnux

• Samsung announced two low-end Android handsets — the 3.2-inch Galaxy 3 (I5800) and the 2.8-inch Galaxy 5 (I5500) — as well as two Bada OS phones called the Wave 2 and Wave 2 Pro. Meanwhile, Samsung is prepping a keyboard version of its Galaxy S Android phone called the Galaxy S Pro, says AndroidCommunity.

Kernel Space

Applications

Proprietary

• These releases mark a complete Navicat product offering to the Linux users. Linux users can now experience the comprehensive database administration for MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL and SQLite with Navicat.

• Adobe might have finally released the full version of Flash Player 10.1 – which includes hardware acceleration during video playback – but it’s come at a cost: the removal of the 64-bit edition for Linux.

• Clearly, Opera 10.6 is the fastest browser on my Ubuntu Linux PC, trumping my current favorite, Mozilla Firefox 3.6 and even Google Chrome.

Instructionals

Distributions

New Releases

• sidux 2010-01, codenamed “Hypnos,” has now been released, the first update to the sidux distro this year. The highlights are KDE SC 4.4.4 and the latest Linux kernel 2.6.34. Of course, all other packages are on par with the ones available in the Debian sid repositories at the date of the release. The developers have also gotten some work done on the early boot components, GRUB 2 for the regular installs and ISOLINUX for the live environment.

Red Hat Family

• Savvytek, the exclusive Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) Premier Partner and Certified Training Partner in the MENA region, has signed an agreement with KULACOM Jordan to provide Oracle and Red Hat licensing and technical implementation and support services for KULACOM Jordan’s Datacenter clients.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• In Short Ubuntu’s one-size-fits-all nature makes it a good initial introduction to Linux-based operating systems. Visually, it keeps improving, but it is not quite all the way there yet. While many can argue whether Linux is ready for the desktop, there’s little doubt that Canonical packages up Ubuntu better than the vast majority of distributions out there. The biggest compliment one can pay to Ubuntu is that it feels like a professional product in its installation, look and feel and above all updates. If nothing else, you should give Ubuntu a try to give you some perspective on how well your own OS suits you.

• The Good Maturity and popularity aid in usability, integration with cloud services, long-term support (LTS) release, painless update from previous version.

• The Bad Might be too Mickey Mouse for hardcore Linux users, strong branding and colour scheme.

• The Ugly Nothing.

• Bartender’s Score 8/10

• In use, Ubuntu is a stable operating system with a mature front end. Version 10 is a pleasure to use, feeling more responsive than any form of Windows and easy to configure via the various control panel dialog boxes.

• Through Ubuntu Advantage and other new support options for enterprises, Canonical does seem to be taking a page from the Red Hat playback. Red Hat, of course, is legendary for its success in offering free support for open source software. Ubuntu Advantage consists of numerous types of support. In addition to the traditioal technical support that Canonical has offered. Ubuntu Advantage provides access to online and offline applications and legal assurances.

Devices/Embedded

• Embedded Ally is a California-based provider of Linux, middleware and software for mobile and embedded devices.

• “This has pushed us into the open source community,” said Rhines.

• Mentor Graphics is pushing into Linux, actually developing Linux-based software products for Freescale, following up on a similar agreement it announced last summer with Marvell. That comes in addition to the company’s existing Nucleus RTOS, which is already widely distributed.

Nokia/MeeGo

• NOKIA has taken a big step forward with the N900 slider smartphone which ditches the stolid Symbian operating system (OS) for the more pleasing looks of Maemo 5, a Linux-based OS. Having tested the N900 for two weeks, I can cheerfully report that it is definitely a step in the right direction.

• While the document itself suggested that the OS for the phone could be the Linux based MeeGo, the video seems to confirm this.

• Although both the operating system (OS) is open source, the Finnish smartphone manufacturer Nokia will never use Android for their smartphones. Nokia prefer Meego and Symbian.

Free Software/Open Source

• Mοѕt οf thе open source software programs fοr social networking ѕο far аrе free. One thаt charges іѕ PHPizabi bυt despite thаt thеrе аrе still people willing tο υѕе іt. Sοmе οf іtѕ features include being аbƖе tο access іt through уουr desktop, communicating wіth friends іn thе chat room аnԁ maintaining a contact system.

• Students of Curtin University of Technology, Sarawak (Curtin Sarawak) have won two prizes in the Sarawak Open Source Competition organised by Sarawak Information Systems Sdn Bhd (SAINS).

• IBM wants to take Enterprise Generation Language open source. Last week at its Rational user conference in Florida, the vendor submitted a proposal to the Eclipse consortium that would place the bulk of EGL–a high-level language intended for Power Systems and mainframe shops that generates Java, JavaScript, and COBOL code–into the public realm.

Vuvuzela

• Around the world, human ingenuity has been harnessed in pursuit of a single goal: removing the vuvuzela’s drone from World Cup football broadcasts through noise-canceling devices, EQ settings, and Linux.

• If you’re a soccer fan, now you can listen to the game without losing your hearing — or your mind. Kudos to Kaechele for a brilliant implementation of a terrific open source tools.

Events

• As Michael Kleinhenz, member of the extended board of LinuxTag said, “in the long term open source has huge potential for saving costs. Thus it is all the more important to make funds available for research and investment, in order to get even more companies, public authorities and administrations to make use of open source. Open formats which everyone can use free of charge also increase transparency and improve security. More IT decision-makers should take this into account. LinuxTag contributes towards raising awareness of open source even more and thus propelling it even further.“

Mozilla

• When you install the Ubuntu Netbook Edition in October, don’t look for Firefox on the desktop — it won’t be there. Chromium, Chrome’s open source cousin, is going to be taking its place. After years of desktop dominance on Linux, is Firefox losing its foothold or is this an anomaly?

SaaS

• Talend, another open source company, offers a data-integration-as-a-service solution, called Talend on Demand, which launched in 2007. I’d love to be able to tell you the difference between offering a cloud-based solution and a SaaS-based solution, but I’m still trying to figure that one out. Obviously, Jitterbit’s solution runs on Amazon EC2, whereas Talend is a subscription service that requires you to download a management product, but beyond that, I’m not sure. I’ll have to get back with you on that one.

Databases

• Open source company Ingres has released a vector version of its database, which it claims speeds up database operations enough to reduce the equipment required and greatly extend the use of realtime analytics.

CMS

• Of the open source Content Management Services, three options stand out from a crowded field; Drupal, Joomla and WordPress. Each one has it’s own benefits.

Business

• Ann All spoke with David White, senior research analyst for Aberdeen Group and author of a report titled “Open Source Business Intelligence: The Cost, Utilization and Innovation Factors that Matter.”

Openness/Sharing

• Mendeley offers a secure online database for scientists, academics and researchers to store their research papers in the ‘cloud’, making it easier to share those documents with peers. The system also helps researchers find and connect to like-minded academics in similar fields by looking at and extracting relevant meta-data from the millions of research papers stored in its database.

Open Access/Content

• A while ago I took a decision to only publish in open access journals. I recently received two requests to review articles for journals. Peer-review is one of the great unseen tasks performed by academics. Most of us do some, for no particular reward, but out of a sense of duty towards the overall quality of research. It is probably a community norm also, as you become enculturated in the community of your discipline, there are a number of tasks you perform to achieve, and to demonstrate, this, a number of which are allied to publishing: Writing conference papers, writing journal articles, reviewing.

• When I took on the role of Editor-in-Chief of this open-access journal, I began, for the first time, to think about scholarly communication beyond submitting my papers and getting them published.

Leftovers

• Advertising (as is traditionally recognised) is inevitably in decline. This is because it resulted from an extreme asymmetry that developed between vendors and customers when vendors became mass producers, and could no longer meet their customers on a one-to-one basis. It was further exacerbated when vendors took advantage of mass communications technology (printing, broadcasting) to communicate UNIDIRECTIONALLY to their customers (current and potential). Very little communication has been possible in the other direction for decades if not a century or more, i.e. customers needing to communicate their wants and prices to potential vendors, especially mass producers.

Science

• A vast ocean chock-full of microbes may have once covered more than a third of Mars’s surface, scientists say.

• The new evidence, from an analysis of dried-up Mars river deltas, adds to growing signs the red planet was once wet.

• Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation “space storm”, Nasa has warned.

• The Kepler spacecraft has found over 750 candidates for extrasolar planets, and that is just from data collected in the first 43 days of the spacecraft’s observations. “This is the biggest release of candidate planets that has ever happened,” said William Borucki, Kepler’s lead scientist. “The number of candidate planets is actually greater than all the planets that have been discovered in the last 15 years.”

Security/Aggression

• Police have arrested 178 people in Europe and the United States suspected of cloning credit and debit cards in an international scam worth over 20 million euro ($24.52 million), according to a report from Reuters and authorities in Spain.

• Crown court clears Harvie Brown of violent disorder in case that challenged police version of events

Environment

• President Obama’s attacks on “British Petroleum” and its chief executive, Tony Hayward, are deeply unedifying. Not because of the hypocrisy and misinformation involved, though there is plenty of that: BP has not been called British Petroleum for years and its controversial dividend is denominated in US dollars.

• Oil giant BP is to put $20bn (£13.5bn) in a compensation fund for victims of the Gulf oil spill and will not pay shareholders a dividend this year.

• Conventional oil production has a limited capacity. Most additional demand must be met by unconventional sources, which are abundant. But the capacity for production depends on the effective management of environmental, social and technical challenges that unconventional sources pose. The current disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is a clear indicator of how these boundaries are being pushed.

• Nick Clegg today warned that a row between Britain and the US over the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was in danger of turning into a destructive bout of “megaphone diplomacy”.

• US government figures show twice as much oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico than earlier estimations suggested

• World governments voted last night to set up a major new international body to spearhead the battle against the destruction of the natural world.

• With growing concern about the human impacts of destruction of habitats and species from around the world, from riots over food shortages and high prices, to worsening floods, and global climate change, more than 80 governments voted to take action in the final hours of a week-long conference in Busan, South Korea.

• Human Rights Watch has called on the Chinese government to release three Tibetan environmental activists who have played a major role in protecting the fragile eco-system on the roof of the world.

• A new blueprint for a global climate agreement would force the United States to massively reduce its greenhouse gas emissions but could also limit developing countries’ attempts to grow their economies, diplomats at the resumed global climate change talks said today.

• In the boom years of the 1990s, the workshop of Gordon Murray produced the 240mph McLaren F1, one of the fastest and most coveted road cars in the world. This month, the same design team will unveil the next vehicle to roll off the Murray production line, but using a lot less fuel as it does so.

• Three oil companies were last week accused of being complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan. A report published in Sweden by a group of charities and peace activists called for Swedish oil company Lundin, Petronas of Malaysia and OMV of Austria to be investigated by their national governments.

Finance

• The problem is getting worse. Notional amounts of derivatives held by federally insured banks have risen to more than $200 trillion.

• A Senate proposal to force banks to shed their lucrative yet risk-laden derivatives units — which is vehemently opposed by Wall Street — is gaining steam, picking up the support of some regional Federal Reserve chiefs with more on the way.

• Yet President Barack Obama’s Treasury Department, led by Timothy Geithner, continues to oppose the measure, Senate aides say, who add that Treasury is supporting Wall Street over Main Street by opposing the measure considered of “utmost importance” to financial stability.

• An effort to force some of the nation’s biggest banks to spin off their lucrative derivatives-dealing operations appears to be gaining traction, as members of a House-Senate conference begin finalizing details of far-reaching new financial regulations.

• This one’s pretty amazing. So as you know, Blanche Lincoln had this tough primary, which she ultimately won narrowly. Once the seriousness of the challenge became apparent to her, she sidled to the left and toughened up her derivatives language and set out to prove that she was in the pocket of no one except the good people of Arkansas.

• President Barack Obama took office more than 75 years after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated, but, to Obama, that chill March day in 1933 must seem like only yesterday, so often has his performance as president been contrasted with that of FDR’s in the halcyon days of the New Deal.

• This post also appears at the Presimetrics Blog. It contains some information that has appeared in a few different Angry Bear posts, but I think I’m starting to manage to put it into a more coherent narrative. And as I’m able to do that, I’m able to move slowly to the next part of the story.

• Today, the Princeton-trained nuclear physicist is investigating for the SEC what was behind the massive flash crash that sent the stock market into a tailspin last month. A specialist at culling conclusions from masses of chaotic information, Berman is in part trying to ascertain whether wrongdoing played a role.

• Although lawyers fill most of the SEC’s ranks, the agency has been hiring experts with specialized quantitative skills and those who have worked on Wall Street who are hip to its tricks.

• There’s been no shortage of books that purport to dissect the financial crisis and all that ails Wall Street. Get ready for another entry: Chasing Goldman Sachs, by Suzanne McGee of Barron’s, the latest journalistic effort to get the real story behind the implosion that’s still rocking the economy.

• Goldman culture rewards hard-nosed aggressiveness and doesn’t put the client’s interests before those of the firm.

• Now it seems that we were lacking a crucial document: the firm’s internal Code of Ethics, which Goldman Sachs recently made public. Under the provisions of this remarkable Code, what Goldman Sachs did to its clients wasn’t unethical at all; deceptive, conflicted, and unfair, yes…but not unethical, in the sense that it didn’t violate the Ethics Code itself. “Impossible!” you say? Ah, you underestimate the firm’s cleverness.

• Despite all the bad headlines — the accusations of fraud, the talk of a big settlement, the risk, however remote, of criminal charges — there’s an inconvenient truth that’s been largely ignored: Most of Goldman’s big customers are not bolting.

• McGee, a contributing editor at Barron’s, isn’t out to bury Goldman Sachs Group Inc. or Blankfein, its chief executive officer. Her goal is, rather, to show how Wall Street bankers became preoccupied with their own short-term interests and drifted away from their raison d’etre — to funnel capital from investors to companies that need it.

• As if a nearly two-year siege of negative attention hasn’t been enough of a distraction for Goldman Sachs, now the controversial investment bank appears to be battling a potential bed bug problem.

• If reputational risk wasn’t a top issue for CEOs and boards of directors prior to 2010, the watershed events of the first half of this year should make them reconsider their priorities. Of course there’s the wrath of the American consumer wrought by BP, thanks to the deadly accident on board the Deepwater Horizon rig and the subsequent Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Before BP, however, two other companies sullied their sterling reputations and are still paying the price.

• Last week, President Barack Obama told us he is looking for someone’s “ass to kick.” He seems to be still looking for one, so perhaps he could use some suggestions.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• A website in support of Canada’s proposed US-style copyright law looks to be a work of corporate astroturf, and signs point to the Canadian Record Industry Association (mostly composed of US record labels; many Canadian labels have left to form an independent lobby that opposes much of CRIA’s agenda) as the entity behind it. The group, Balanced Copyright for Canada, has bought headline placement on Bourque, and recently took down its member list after TVOntario reporter Jesse Brown announced that it appeared to consist of record execs from CRIA’s member-companies.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Deep packet inspection (DPI) hardware continues to sell, with ABI Research now estimating that vendors will move $1.3 billion of the stuff in 2015, up from $207 million in 2008. According to Infonetics Research, DPI will be a $1.5 billion business—by 2013.

• What will DPI devices be used for? According to ABI, “optimizing” mobile networks will be one of the chief uses—and by “optimizing” they mean limiting or prioritizing traffic from data-hungry mobile devices.

• “Brute force won’t solve this problem,” said ABI’s Aditya Kaul. “If you double the number of smartphone users, you can’t just spend $10 billion to double the capacity of your infrastructure.”

• The United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation raised the alarm after picking up a threat posted on social networking site Facebook.

• A 19-year-old man was arrested and later released on bail.

• More than 1,000 students, some of them taking their GCSEs, were in the Birley Street school at the time of the alert.

• All entrances and exits were sealed while police investigated.

• ‘Leaving this world’

• The school said it was the FBI who raised the alarm after internet scanning software picked up a suspicious combination of words.

• But the downside is that everyone who reads the posting will know the user isn’t home. On top of that, some services, such as Foursquare, can be linked to Twitter feeds.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

Copyrights

• The largest P2P conglomerate ever assembled is supporting today’s launch of the first episode of ‘Pioneer One.’ The show, made for and made possible by the P2P community, is actively promoted by uTorrent, Limewire and a variety of prominent torrent sites including The Pirate Bay and EZTV.

• The federal government’s national consultation on a digital economy strategy is now past the half-way mark, having generated a somewhat tepid response so far.

• The consultation document itself may bear some of the blame for lack of buzz since the government asks many of the right questions, but lacks a clear vision of the principles that would define a Canadian digital strategy.

ACTA

• The World Trade Organization has posted further information on last week’s Council meeting where India, China, and other developing countries raised concerns with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

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