● 08.21.10

● Links 21/8/2010: X Server 1.9.0, Droid 2

Posted in News Roundup at 5:00 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• How about application GUIs that learn, and get more streamlined over time because they remember your previous operations? Instead of having to wade through the same baby steps every time you use the program. Or configurable GUIs so we can streamline them ourselves. I think this all by itself would be a “killer feature”. It does not seem that efficiency is very important in GUI design. The command line still reigns supreme for efficiency because it has multiple tools for customization, doing things faster, and automating repetitive tasks.

• OK, well, that’s pretty much it for my Linux usability wish list. For the most part working in Linux is pleasant and satisfying, much more so than Mac and Windows, and I can’t find too much to get exercised about. What are your usability wishes?

Audiocasts/Shows

IBM

• Recently, some colleagues were talking about the upcoming LinuxCon 2010 in Boston – “The Linux Foundation’s annual technical conference that provides and unmatched collaboration and education space for all matters Linux.” Hearing about this conference brought me back to 1999, when we started a number of studies that culminated in the announcement of the new IBM Linux initiative in January of 2000.

• By the summer of 1999, Linux was picking up steam in the marketplace, especially in areas where IBM was very involved, including Internet infrastructure and supercomputing. At the time, a number of research institutions and leading edge companies were already using clusters of Intel processors running Linux as a way of building relatively inexpensive, and increasingly powerful supercomputers, as well as highly scalable web servers, distributed file and print servers, network firewalls, and other Internet infrastructure applications.

• We commissioned a couple of studies, one focused on the use of Linux in supercomputing, and the other on Linux as a high-volume platform for Internet applications. Both studies strongly recommended that IBM embrace Linux across its product lines, that IBM should work closely with the open Linux community as a partner in its development, and that we should establish an organization to coordinate Linux activities across the company.

Kernel Space

• Kernel mode-setting (KMS) is useful for faster VT/X switching, VTs being always at the panel’s native resolution, the ability to thwart some security bugs in the X.Org Server (as shown earlier this week), presenting a cleaner and more flexible architecture, and allowing new and interesting projects to emerge (such as Plymouth and Wayland), but the benefits do not end there. When kernel mode-setting is combined with KDB, a Linux kernel debugger shell, you now have one powerful combination.

Graphics Stack

• Welcome to X server version 1.9.0.

Applications

Instructionals/Technical

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• So, one of the first distros that contacted me related to branded Stripes was openSuse. So, this is one of the versions.

GNOME Desktop

• We introduced to you guys probably the best combination of gtk theme and icon set for Ubuntu/Gnome[Equinox gtk theme + Faenza icon theme]. Now take a look at Awoken icon theme. I won’t say it is better than Faenza icon theme, but it is almost as good.

Distributions

Debian Family

Canonical/Ubuntu

• So, who’s up for making Maverick Movies? It would be great to have a “10 best features in 10.10″ video collection for release. Unity’s awesome and then there are things to show off in OO.o, Gnome, Firefox…. giving credit where it’s due.

• Something I need to make clear up front is that the KDE client does not connect to the Ubuntu One servers itself. This will probably sound odd to you, so let me explain just how both the KDE and GNOME clients generally work. There is a helper application for authentication (in up to 10.04 called ubuntuone-auth, in 10.10 and above ubuntu-sso-client) that handles authentication to Ubuntu One. Secondly there is a synchronization component called SyncDaemon, as one can assume it handles synchronization of data and is essentially the gateway to the the servers. Thirdly there are clients that talk to the SyncDaemon. Such a client could be a tray icon that informs you whether your SyncDaemon is actually connected or not. But it could just as well be an application to manage your shares. I implemented 2 of those using KDE or Qt technologies, namely the client structures and the authentication helper. I did not reimplement the SyncDaemon!

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Android

• Motorola set the standard for Android-based QWERTY sliders when it launched the original Droid last year. An aggressive advertising campaign, excellent specs, and an appealing form factor propelled the Droid to the top of the charts and made it one of the best-selling Android smartphones. Motorola is sticking to its winning formula for the product’s sequel, the Droid 2, which recently launched on Verizon’s network.

Free Software/Open Source

• “Public Software? The so-called Public Software is a political project which aims to remove the Free Software main feature: the Freedom. It tries to put the people in the role of mere “viewing public”. The Free Software Social Movement historically called the participation of the entire society for the transformation of the surrounding reality, it aimed to create PRODUCERS of free culture, free software, free computer networks and free hardware in order to achieve a freer society .

• It is common for market laggards to go open source. It is less common for market leaders to do so.

• Thus we need to celebrate the Affero GPL 3.0 version of Urbi, software that powers (among others) the Segway RMP and Lego Mindstorm.

• When Amanda Brock joined Canonical two and a half years ago, she discovered something rather surprising about open source.

• Within the Drupal project, we don’t have a paid staff to advance the software. However, many of the developers who contribute to critical parts of the Drupal code base make their living by building complex Drupal websites. Some Drupal developers are paid by customers to contribute their expertise to the Drupal project or are employed by companies “sponsoring” Drupal development.

• I’ve been working as a freelancer for almost a year now, and I cannot help noticing how free software helps making this possible. Working in an international setting, most of the work is done from my home office. This requires techniques to get the work done. Small motivational “rewards” (or really fun customer assignments so that one forgets lunch…) The other half is the communication with the customers itself. This is where free software enters the picture.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Today, Mitchell Baker was announced as the recipient of Frost & Sullivan’s 2010 Growth, Innovation and Leadership Award. Mitchell will be honored for her achievements at the annual GIL 2010 event in Silicon Valley on September 13, 2010.

Oracle

• By now you’ve read that Oracle has sued Google for patent and copyright infringement related to the Android platform. Google has responded that the claims are baseless and counter to the open source community movement. In all the hullabaloo, the press, pundits, Oracle, and Google seem to have ignored the impact on enterprise Java.

Healthcare

• Long before open source entered the lexicon, the Veterans Administration (VA) was known to techies for VistA, an electronic medical record (EMR) program written in MUMPS that was developed in an open way and published as a public record, freely available.

Leftovers

• Do parents have the right to know which of their kids’ teachers are the most and least effective? That’s the controversy roaring in California this week with the publication of an investigative series by the Los Angeles Times’s Jason Song and Jason Felch, who used seven years of math and English test data to publicly identify the best and the worst third- to fifth-grade teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The newspaper’s announcement of its plans to release data later this month on all 6,000 of the city’s elementary-school teachers has prompted the local teachers’ union to rally members to organize a boycott of the newspaper.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Indeed, for Transitionists who dream of moving quadrillions of BTU demand, currently supplied by oil in global transport, over to a new electrified grid it behooves us to think harder about resources such as Copper. Like Kedrosky, and surely some of my readers, I have marveled over the possibilities of material upgrading and other technological wonders of resource substitution–the kinds of methods that often appear in presentations from places like MIT’s Solar Group. That said, we need to confront the fact that in conjunction with new lows in global copper ore grades, the price of copper–just like oil–has entered a new regime. Expecting a miracle of substitution in copper, or a price reversal downward away from the current regime, is certainly not realistic if we are on the threshold of hitting hard global copper resources to electrify world transport. Simon-Ehrlich recasted is another important step, therefore, towards the realism we need to actually solve the challenge of energy-transition.

Finance

• If you’re expecting the new financial reform law to cut into Goldman Sachs’ profits, think again, says Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that Goldman executives are privately — and with conviction — assuring analysts that they won’t make any less money than they did before. Goldman appears to be “seriously preparing for some major changes,” since the new rules bar banks from engaging in proprietary trading, or investing the firm’s own money. The idea is to prevent federally-insured depository institutions from “engaging in high-risk speculation,” but apparently there are enough “loopholes” in the new law to “allow the bank to continue gambling as before.”

• What to make of their latest research note? It is something of a glass half-full, glass half-empty story. Here are excerpts from the report, by Ed McKelvey, issued Thursday. Make your own call on whether to view this take on the U.S. economic outlook as fundamentally optimistic or pessimistic.

• A New York judge has combined two shareholder lawsuits against executives and directors of Goldman Sachs Group Inc and put the case on hold pending progress on resolving it and 16 related federal lawsuits.

• All of the lawsuits concern Abacus, a transaction that led to Goldman’s agreement in July to pay $550 million to resolve a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission civil fraud lawsuit.

• That’s not the way Goldman handled its image, though. With few exceptions, Goldman dismissed the verdicts of its critics. That just created more of them, culminating in an ignominious Securities and Exchange Commission fraud charge and settlement. It all tarnished the firm’s stated goal of unparalleled client focus.

• Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Bill Gross urged government officials today to allow all borrowers who haven’t missed payments on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans to get lower-cost mortgages. Dachille, who oversees about $8 billion of fixed-income investments, supported the idea yesterday in a telephone interview, saying such financing should be offered without consideration of homeowners’ incomes or house values.

• John Paulson, the hedge-fund manager who became a billionaire by betting against U.S. mortgage markets, bought 1.1 million shares of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in the second quarter.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Spiegel reports that German photographer and IT consultant Jens Best wants to personally take snapshots of all those (German) buildings which people asked Google Street View to remove. He then wants to add those photos to Picasa, including GPS coordinates, and in turn re-connect them with Google Maps. Jens believes that for the internet “we must apply the same rules as we do in the real world. Our right to take panoramic snapshots, for instance, or to take photographs in public spaces, both base laws which determine that one may photograph those things that are visible from public streets and places.”

• “I do not consider there to be any reason to suspect that he has committed rape,” chief prosecutor Eva Finné said in a statement explaining her decision.

• The statement was issued at 4.30pm on Saturday to confirm that Assange was no longer a suspect and is thus no longer required to contact the police.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Plenty of people are worried that the Google/Verizon net neutrality proposal has too many exceptions. The recording industry is worried that it doesn’t have enough.

• In a letter sent today to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the RIAA and other music trade groups expressed their concern that the riddled-with-gaping-loopholes policy framework nevertheless might put a damper on ISP attempts to find and filter piratical material flowing through the Internet’s tubes. Failure to allow for this sort of behavior would lead to an Internet of “chaos.”

• Posting on the userbase.be forums, the ISP was kind enough to share data on its top 20 subscribers (with their permission). In the top spot was a user who managed to transfer 2.7TB of data in a single month. 2nd to 5th spots counted 1.9TB, 1.4TB, 1.3TB, and 1TB of data transferred. After that the numbers fall quickly.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

ACTA

• Round ten of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations in Washington concluded on Friday with countries confirming progress on all fronts and hopes to reach agreement on all remaining substantive issues at the next round in negotiations in Japan in late September. While the joint statement is not yet online, Reuters reports that the U.S. believes the remaining issues – including the U.S. – E.U. divide over geographical indications – could be resolved at the next meeting. The statement repeats earlier assurances about the impact on fundamental rights, cross-border transit of generic medicines, and iPod searching border guards.

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