● 06.18.10

● Links 18/6/2010: WordPress 3.0, OLPC for 90,000 in Uruguay

Posted in News Roundup at 3:04 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• This is why I like SimplyMepis. I like Linux Mint. I like PCLOS. I like Sabayon. I like Pardus.

• Oh, I still like Slackware, Debian, and Gentoo too, for nostalgic reasons, but when it comes to choosing a desktop these days, I pick from the first list.

• I know why the bigger commercial distros can’t include all that stuff and why some others don’t. But this is why we hope these smaller projects never give up and go home. They make life easier and these days, we can all use that.

• Stand up and be proud of what you’ve done for Linux. Yes, you’ll draw your share of ire and fire but isn’t every great fight worth it for the freedom it brings to everyone?

Applications

• This application is most probably going to be of interest to people working in the education field, as I am, but not only.

• I discovered scenari when one of the developers came for a 3 days workshop at my university. I create resources and teach online and have been so far doing very poorly regarding online multimedia documents. Mainly out of ignorance and poor taste for multimedia techy stuff, I have given .pdf online and that was about it..

• Have you always wanted to set up your own music station to stream your latest music collection to your friends or colleagues? Have you been thinking lately of setting up an always-on music streaming server so that you can just open up your web browser and listen to your favorite tracks? A music server is great in a dormitory, laboratory or office where the file server can double up as the music server! I will show you how using Zeya.

• Millions of web users rely on PDF files every day to consume a wide variety of text and media content. To enable this, a number of plug-ins exist today which allow users to open PDF files inside their browsers.

Games

• Linux games are many and varied. You can find pretty much anything you need, from simple arcades via racing all the way to expansive and elaborate tactical shooters. Still, one aspect of the Linux gaming scene is underplayed, this being the Real Time Strategy (RTS). For whatever reason, there’s a lack of great strategy games for Linux. You will find some, but not as many as you would hope for.

Distributions

• From Microsoft Bob to Edubuntu there have been a number of attempts at making computers of various sorts easier and more useful for young people. Another participant in this space is Kiddix, “a complete operating system and software environment for children, built from the ground up with your family’s needs and safety in mind.” Kiddix is built upon Linux, and aims to present things in a very “kid friendly” way. Through the end of June, Kiddix is running a “Pay What You Want” promotion, allowing you to pay any amount to buy their OS.

Red Hat Family

• Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) booked a new 52 week high today by trading above $32.34, traders are definitely monitoring Red Hat’s price action to see if this move attracts further buying into the stock.

• The Red Hat and JBoss Innovation Awards finalists are recognized in four separate categories. In addition, a fifth category recognizes a finalist that is deploying a combined solution from Red Hat’s platform and middleware portfolios. Each Red Hat Innovation Awards category winner will be provided with complimentary admission to the 2010 Red Hat Summit and JBoss World, where they will be recognized at an awards ceremony in a general session for both Red Hat Summit and JBoss World attendees.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Is Canonical taking on Red Hat with its new commercial support service? Canonical’s move “is not as much a competition as an expansion into a growing market,” Pogson opined. “GNU/Linux has taken about all it can from Unix operating systems; now it is time to kick M$ out of servers.”

Devices/Embedded

• OLPC has just been awarded an order from Plan Ceibal for 90,000 XO’s for teenagers in Uruguay. Yes, there will be a new XO specially for teenagers. Uruguay already has 380,000 of the original XOs for younger children, and now the kids can graduate to one designed for them as they mature.

• It’s to be a dual boot laptop. Note not triple boot. No Microsoft in this picture at all. GNOME has leaped into the pool to help out. The press release says, “It will feature the learning-focused Sugar user interface together with the Gnome Desktop Environment to provide a dual-boot Linux operating system with office productivity tools.” I wish I were a teenager in Uruguay so I could have one. If they do the partner program, I’m in.

Free Software/Open Source

• I had the opportunity to talk a little bit with Dirk Riehle at LinuxTag about business models, collaboration and infrastructures, and one of the arguments was about software forges, like SourceForge or GForge. I would like to provide a little bit of overview of our discussion, along with my reasoning about the future of such forges.

CMS

• Arm your vuvuzelas: WordPress 3.0, the thirteenth major release of WordPress and the culmination of half a year of work by 218 contributors, is now available for download (or upgrade within your dashboard). Major new features in this release include a sexy new default theme called Twenty Ten.

• Clickability, a proprietary SaaS platform for content management, has compared SaaS to Open Source. Not only is the comparison inaccurate, it omits the downsides of SaaS and frankly, they are comparing apples to oranges. Open Source is a licensing and development model, SaaS is a software delivery model. Either they are distorting things on purpose, or they don’t understand Open Source at all. In other words, time to look at some good ol’ FUD and to share my take on Open Source versus SaaS.

Healthcare

• Brian Behlendorf, one of the founders of the Apache web server project and the CollabNet cooperative software development company, is contracting now with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the CONNECT software project. CONNECT helps hospitals and agencies exchange medical data, which gives doctors critical information to improve patient care.

Business

• After all, giving away your “intellectual property” for the greater good may be a nice theory in some ideal world, but it rather flies in the face of capitalism, doesn’t it?

• Rubbish! In fact, I’d argue that Open Source is actually more true to capitalist principles than traditional proprietary software practices. It all comes down to the principle of efficient markets.

• Proprietary software is akin to the privatisation of the railways. It pays lip-service to the perceived efficiency benefits but if you look at it closely, you realise that the fundamental motivation of competition is absent.

Openness/Sharing

• The UK’s most senior civil servants have been wined and dined by major corporations and interest groups on more than 3,100 occasions in the last three years, the Bureau can reveal.

Open Data

• When the British Government said at the beginning of May that they would be releasing a ‘tsunami of public data’ you had to wonder whether reality would match up to the rhetoric. Oh ye of little faith… A fortnight ago, the Government released hundreds of new datasets – including a full list of Government expenditure – and this week, Transport for London announced that they too would be releasing lots of their transport data for free to the public.

• Back in February, we were encouraging participation in the Open Government Directive conversations happening at federal agencies, since they were busy creating their open government plans, and in a uniquely responsive position.

• Sunlight’s Nancy Watzman, submitted a request for the Department of Health and Human Services, calling on them to release a database on drugs, medical devices, and food recalls by manufacturers. Nancy has been writing extensively on HHS and FDA data issues, including our award-winning investigation, Heart of the Matter.

• The following guest post is from Julian Todd, who works on projects such as Public Whip, UNdemocracy, and ScraperWiki. He is also a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Government Data.. The post was originally published on Julian’s blog, Freesteel.

• Yesterday Transport for London made a data dump of various locations and links to their traffic cameras, station locations, and so on.

Inhibiting Open Access

• The aim is to restrict the conditions that would permit to increase the number and the range of accessible format works available. The Joint recommendation is about when “there is no appropriate commercial product on offer.” If a book exist in an audio format but not in a indexable format or searchable format, is it “on offer” to people with disabilities?

• I’ve been keeping schtum about the Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT) for a while for three reasons:

• 1. I submitted a proposal along with a team of professional evaluators to be the review’s “independent expert” 2. I know nearly all the members of the team and I respect them all 3. They’re working to a tight timetable so you have to give some benefit of doubt

Leftovers

Science

• San Francisco, a U.S. trendsetter on many social issues, voted Tuesday to require retailers to post notices on how much radiation is emitted by cellphones they sell.

• NASA-funded scientists estimate from recent research that the volume of water molecules locked inside minerals in the moon’s interior could exceed the amount of water in the Great Lakes here on Earth.

Security/Aggression

• A police officer accused of striking a woman with a baton at a G20 protest has been cleared by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Environment

• The compromise between the European Parliament, the Spanish EU Presidency and the European Commission is a step towards ensuring that illegally harvested timber and wood products cannot be sold on the EU market.

• It is estimated that 20-40% of global industrial wood production comes from illegal sources, with up to 20% ending up on the EU market.

• One view is that energy prices will rise, substitutes will be found, and prices will come back down again, perhaps settling at a somewhat higher equilibrium reflecting the cost of producing the substitute energy source. The economy will continue to function pretty much as before. The catch is that we aren’t finding reasonably-priced, scalable substitutes, so this isn’t happening. Oil prices are down, but not because of substitutes.

• Joe Barton says it is “a tragedy of the first proportion” that BP agreed to Obama’s request to set up a $20 billion fund to compensate Americans — and then he apologizes to BP CEO Hayward!

• As BP’s boss Tony Hayward is grilled by US Congressional Comittee the results are all too predictable. You’d think Tony Hayward was a politician, with the skills he;’s shown at evading responsibility and dodging questions. It seems however that the politicians grilling him are understandably a tad annoyed at this behaviour. The problem is this; they (the politicians) spend their ENTIRE POLITICAL CAREERS doing the very same.

Finance

• Some 500 people have been arrested in a nationwide crackdown on mortgage fraud, and federal officials pointed to Las Vegas as one of the centers of the scams that pumped up home prices until the housing market bubble finally burst.

• Democrats accused Republicans of stalling. Republicans said Democrats were overlooking a real financial catastrophe.

• As Day Two of the Wall Street reform conference debate dragged on, partisan bickering underscored just how tough it would be to finish the bill by July 4.

• A flurry of opposition from New York City-area politicians and House moderates is aimed at blunting tough new financial regulations — an 11th-hour lobbying blitz that could shift momentum once again in the Wall Street reform fight.

• A stimulus program to encourage local infrastructure spending has come under fire as supporters seek reauthorization.

• Congress’s proposed overhaul of U.S. bank regulation wouldn’t have averted the 2008 financial crisis and does too little to prevent a recurrence, two former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission said.

• Ninety-one U.S. banks and thrifts missed paying their May 17 TARP dividend payment, according to data compiled by SNL Financial.

• A central idea in the financial regulations undergoing final negotiation in the United States — and in similar initiatives in Europe — is that large banks must draw up “living wills” that should explain, in considerable detail, how they will be wound down in the event of future failure.

• According to the Financial Times, the Securities and Exchange Commission is stepping up its inquiries into another complex mortgage-backed deal done by Goldman that was not part of the civil fraud charges the agency already filed against the bank.

• The inquiry into the CDO may not lead to any additional actions against the New York-based securities firm, said the person, who declined to be identified because the investigation isn’t public. Michael DuVally, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs, declined to comment, as did SEC spokesman John Nester. The Financial Times reported the probe yesterday.

• Add to that a mismanaged clean-up effort and criticisms the company is trying to skirt the restoration bill, and BP’s 2010 is a recipe for hatred.

• Grab your pitchforks! Multinational oil company BP has reportedly hired financial advisors from Goldman Sachs to help with the “mounting liabilities” the firm is facing from the Gulf oil spill. BP has denied rumors it is going bankrupt.

• NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is considering naming Robert K. Steel as Deputy Mayor of the city, according to NyPo.

• Representatives of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and American International Group Inc. will appear before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission as the panel holds a hearing on the role of derivatives in the credit crunch.

• But it’s not, as two recent reports note. Andrew Ross Sorkin, writing for the New York Times reports that Goldman’s track record of sound advice and capable work in the capital markets have outweighed criticism against the firm.

• Whether customers are defecting from Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) is hard to quantify. As of now, it’s fair to say the firm has lost some clients. But the clients that the firm cares most about are big Fortune 500 companies, and the New York Times reports that many of them are supporting the company, at least publicly. This isn’t to say the crisis hasn’t hurt the bank. Goldman Sachs had no chance to win the GM mandate, for example.

• Working in Jersey and being infested by bedbugs: the classic double-whammy. Goldman tells ABC News that this is all just normal, nothing to see here, but bedbug experts are like, yea right, they definitely are infested. This is just one more reason for Lloyd Blankfein to thank god for the BP oil spill.

• Matt Taibbi, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, talks with Bloomberg’s Carol Massar about the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• The documents reveal the site bought 50 million adverts on Facebook and other social network sites. These 50 million ads resulted in an awesome 537 people completing the survey on the site. We can only hope the government was paying per click-through rather than for each view of its advert.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• The Icelandic parliament has voted unanimously to create what are intended to be the strongest media freedom laws in the world. And Iceland intends these measures to have international impact, by creating a safe haven for publishers worldwide — and their servers.

• The U.S. Supreme Court, putting limits on the privacy rights of government workers, ruled that a California police department acted reasonably when it reviewed personal text messages on an officer’s government-issued pager.

• The justices today unanimously rejected arguments by SWAT team member Jeff Quon that the city of Ontario violated his rights under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable government searches.

Copyrights

• In the face of increasing examples of such copyright policies doing exactly the opposite of what they intend, how is it that our elected officials continue to buy the claims from a few entrenched industries, that copyright needs to be made even more strict? How many more musicians have to have their art and creativity stifled?

• Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which had hinted for nearly a year now that it was working on building some sort of paid content system for publishers, is reportedly launching such a system in Italy, where it has had some of its ugliest confrontations with the news industry. According to a report in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Google is reaching out to publishers there to get them to participate in the program, which it is calling Newspass.

• A coalition of eight music publishers sued the file-sharing service LimeWire on Wednesday, accusing it of copyright infringement, according to the National Music Publishers’ Association, the industry group that organized the suit.

• There’s no pretending this report is light reading, but I do think it represents an important statement about the need for basing copyright law on empirical evidence. Against the background of blatant lobbying during the passage of the Digital Economy Act, that surely has to be good news for everyone – whether or not they are copyright geeks.

• It’s time for IWTBF to die because it’s become the easiest, laziest straw man for Hollywood’s authoritarian bullies to throw up as a justification for the monotonic increase of surveillance, control, and censorship in our networks and tools. I can imagine them saying: “These people only want network freedom because they believe that ‘information wants to be free’. They pretend to be concerned about freedom, but the only ‘free’ they care about is ‘free of charge.’”

• But this is just wrong. “Information wants to be free” has the same relationship to the digital rights movement that “kill whitey” has to the racial equality movement: a thoughtless caricature that replaces a nuanced, principled stand with a cartoon character. Calling IWTBF the ideological basis of the movement is like characterising bra burning as the primary preoccupation of feminists (in reality, the number of bras burned by feminists in the history of the struggle for gender equality appears to be zero, or as close to it as makes no difference).

• So what do digital rights activists want, if not “free information?”

• Pioneer One can be found over at VODO, a tracker site for free to download media and a worthwhile visit, since these files will not have a warning letter dropping through your letterbox for sharing them. The pilot episode apparently cost $6000 dollars to shoot and there are 7 episodes in the first series to be followed with a planed 4 more series.

Clip of the DayHenny Keyzer – CLUG Talk 28 April 2009 – Microcontrollers (2009) 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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