● 10.23.10

● Links 23/10/2010: Wiimote on GNU/Linux, Mint Raves

Posted in News Roundup at 6:51 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• This article is based on the slide of Daniele Napolitano, and on his presentation on Linux Day 2009.

• McAfee’s security products for Mac OS X and Linux primarily exist for compliance purposes rather than any actual threats to those platforms.

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

• Simply put – the Linux Foundation works.

• Unlike earlier efforts at advancing the Linux ecosystem, the Linux Foundation is really doing great work at building standards and helping to grow Linux through multiple collaborative efforts.

• Thorsten Leemhuis has written an excellent survey of the latest Linux release. Linux just keeps getting better. How Linus and company can keep up with new features, bug-fixes, and still have the sanity to envision the future is amazing.

Graphics Stack

• Recently the Nouveau power management code emerged and we recently helped out with timing management, but that’s not all of the work being done at the moment to this community-driven open-source driver for NVIDIA graphics cards. Committed today to the xf86-video-nouveau DDX driver is support for DRI2 page-flipping and sync-to-vblank support.

• While users of Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick Meerkat” have had access to an early release of the Catalyst 10.10 Linux driver that AMD had sent over to Canonical in advance in order to provide X.Org Server 1.9 support, the rest of the Linux-using public now finally has access to the official Catalyst 10.10 build. Those that have already used Catalyst 10.10 in the Ubuntu Maverick release have been rather excited for its changes.

• When looking at our 2010 Linux Graphics Survey results, the second most popular technology sought after by Linux desktop users was video playback acceleration. This isn’t surprising considering only with NVIDIA’s proprietary driver using VDPAU on modern GeForce hardware can you get a decent experience or with select Intel chipsets supporting VA-API. With everything else, you’re pretty much limited to nothing or the not-too-useful X-Video. There’s also cases like with the ATI Catalyst driver providing XvBA support, but that’s often buggy and rubbish, the same goes with the Intel Poulsbo blobs and their VA-API support.

Applications

• For those who don’t know, Ubuntu Tweak is a simple yet powerful application to (ahem, you guessed it) tweak Ubuntu. The project is a very active one, constantly getting updates and new features. In fact, version 0.57 was very recently released and it does more than ever in a compact and user friendly interface.

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• I am sure you noticed I kept this introduction to Ubuntu Tweak (very) high level, but I think it should suffice to give you an idea of what it does and what it is capable of. If you like using the CLI, this application may not be of interest to you, but if you feel right at home using the GUI and need a more powerful and complete configuration editor in Ubuntu, make sure you give Ubuntu Tweak a go.

• PiTiVi has hogged a lot of limelight recently due to its inclusion in popular linux distros. PiTiVi is targeted towards home user who are not seriously in hardcore video editing but only for getting their vacation videos in neat shape maybe with a custom soundtrack. I tested the PiTiVi video editor to see whether it is indeed so user-friendly? Would it please the general video-editing audience? Following are my findings.

• The concept of the dock dates back many decades. Acorn Computer’s Arthur and NeXT’s NEXTSTEP are early examples of operating systems that implemented the dock concept.

• ratGPU is a free OpenCL ray tracing renderer. Currently it works for 3dsmax 2010/2011 but I plan to support Maya too.

Instructionals/Technical

• Please, for the love of God, do not pervert GNU/Linux into Windows, by giving it the worst configuration storage system of all time.

Games

• Challenging puzzle game ‘Brukkon‘ has become the second item to go on sale in the Ubuntu Software Centre.

• Costing $7, the premise of Brukkon is to ‘guide a little robot to its spare parts’ over moving platforms.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• I will present a detailed look at the features of this new interface type.

• KDEPIM 4.4 lives. I tagged and released version 4.4.7 last night.

GNOME Desktop

• Dan Rabbit – creator of the phenomenally popular elementary gtk and icon themes and designer of related elementary projects – has shown off an Ambiance styled mock-up of his ‘Marlin’ file browser.

Distributions

• The Debian installer (and the “alternate” Ubuntu installer that’s pretty much the same thing) offers a fully encrypted LVM option, and Fedora goes further, with LVM as the default and encrypted LVM easily invoked by checking a box.

• That’s what I’m running now: Fully encrypted LVM in Fedora 13′s Xfce spin. Before that I had Debian Lenny with fully encrypted LVM, and before that Ubuntu 8.04 through 10.04 with encrypted /home.

Red Hat Family

Fedora

• Fedora is just now pushing a bunch of updates to my Fedora 13 installation, and they include an updated 2.6.34.7-61 kernel that should fix the problem with NetworkManager disappearing after resuming from suspend.

• One of the last missing pieces in the design for the Fedora 14 release was the Release Party poster and Emily stepped forward and accomplished the task, with an ass-kicking poster design based on our general F14 theme.

Debian Family

• * 1.1 called “Buzz” * 1.2 called “Rex” * 1.3 called “Bo” * 2.0 called “Hamm” * 2.1 called “Slink” * 2.2 called “Potato” * 3.0 called “Woody” [...]

Canonical/Ubuntu

• In this class Micheal will quickly cover how users can:

• * Download and Install Ubuntu * Install their very first package * Report consistent crashes on Launchpad

• In a blog entry posted this week, Canonical CTO Matt Zimmerman outlined how the capabilities of Nokia’s Qt development toolkit can benefit Ubuntu. Some of the specific advantages that he highlights include Qt’s strong corporate backing, robust suitability for cross-platform development, and increasingly rich support for touch interaction.

• Next week is a rather special week in the Ubuntu development cycle, it is the Ubuntu Developer Summit. This is a gathering hosted by Canonical, this time in Orlando, Florida, where developers and all those interested in the future direction of Ubuntu can discuss in person the plans for the next 6 month development cycle leading up to the Natty Narwhal release.

• Ubuntu is a great operating system, especially the version 10.10. It comes with most needed software pre-installed. However, owing to licensing issues some packages are not installed by default. I recommend a few tweaks to polish your fresh installation. It takes lesser time and effort to prepare Ubuntu for a ride than it takes Windows 7 or Apple Mac.

Mint

• A couple of days ago, I wrote a post about leaving Linux Mint and going back to Ubuntu. It wasn’t an exhaustive technical review, just a brief unloading of my state of mind.

• The post was picked up by a couple of Linux-related blogs – tuxmachines.org and techrights.org – and I got some new readers through those links. Unfortunately the first wave of new arrivals consisted of pissed-off Mint fans who didn’t like that I was leaving their favored distro without enumerating a lot more reasons in a lot more detail than I did. If they were regular readers, they’d have understood the background, but I sometimes tend to write as if every reader is a regular. Taken in context of the blog’s history, the piece was a perfectly sensible continuation of other things I’ve said, but taken by itself it surely seemed a little light.

• In discussions between Windows fans and desktop Linux users, Windows people come at it with a sense of superiority in numbers, which infuriates the Linux people. We tend to come in with an aggrieved, vaguely defensive posture. This leads to snide comments and offhanded dismissal of the Windows folks.

• I definitely recommend that anyone even remotely interested in Linux try this one out.

• The stable release of Linux Mint 10 is expected next month and will be supported until April 2012.

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Android

• Google is famous in programming circles for redefining words to suit its ideas.

• Take “beta,” for example. Most of us take it to mean buggy, pre-release software that’s “mostly working, but still under test.” But Google uses the word to refer to a product that’s ready for general use but is subject to “regular updates and constant feature refinement.”

Sub-notebooks

• In an effort to popularize the low-cost laptop costing around Rs 1500, designed specifically for students, the Ministry of Human Resource Development has floated a tender for expression of interest (EoI) to develop the same on mass basis.

Free Software/Open Source

• CivicActions has worked with Amnesty International since 2007 both on their Drupal based website, Amnesty.org and their CiviCRM installation. We first implemented version 1.8 with Drupal 5 and earlier this year upgraded the website to Drupal 6 and CiviCRM to version 3.1, they are now running version 3.2.x.

• This evening I taught the second class session of a 9-week program to teach ~14-year old Girl Scouts how to work with digital media using free software tools. Our first class was last Friday. The classes are two-hours long, on Friday nights (these girls are dedicated!), on a weekly basis.

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• As I did with Red Hat’s earlier Inkscape class, I’m going to try to make a blog post per session to keep you updated on how the class is going, and hopefully to also be a resource to other folks who might be interested in teaching a similar class. I’d like to document any issues we run into and the solutions we come up with as well as the successes we stumble upon to that end.

• Open source software occupies half of the list. This is very promising for individuals who focus on short-term and project-based work.

• Although, some open source technologies, like Linux and Apache Tomcat, have become so prolific they are now mainstream, most will not. Enthusiasts argue all technologies start as the technology newcomer trying to win converts from a well-established leader. Java was in this position with C++ nearly a decade ago.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• You may not be checking in on AreWeFastYet.com all that often. You may even have not known it existed until just now. Whatever the case may be, there’s a very good reason to pay attention to Mozilla’s Firefox 4 performance gauge.

• It’s safe to say a typical Willow Glen 12-year-old doesn’t earn $3,000 for a couple of weeks’ worth of work. Then again, Alex Miller is no typical 12-year-old.

• Alex is a bug hunter, but the bugs he’s uncovering are unlikely to end up in any entomological reference book. Instead, the bug Alex found was a valid critical security flaw buried in the Firefox web browser. For his discovery, he was rewarded a bug bounty of $3,000 by Mozilla, the parent company of Firefox.

SaaS

• Open-source developer Cloud.com announced this morning it is now possible to run Microsoft’s hypervisor with an open-source cloud-computing platform in order to combat the homogeneity and vendor lock-in that would go along with cloud solutions from leading virtualization vendor VMware.

• Cloud.com Chief Marketing Officer Peder Ulander said the company started work on an abstraction layer that would allow Hyper-V to work with the OpenStack cloud platform at the request of a user who was concerned that VMware’s vCloud platform would be too limiting for a large corporate IT operation.

Oracle

• Today is a special day. I feel both sad and relieved, happy and somewhat disgusted. I have officially resigned from all my duties, roles and positions inside the OpenOffice.org project. My resignation is effective immediately and I am leaving the project. I will now be contributing to the Document Foundation, while of course continuing to work at Ars Aperta and at the OASIS as a member of its Board of Director, eGov Steering Committee and ODF Committees.

• So, I was thinking about this, maybe we need to port openoffice as a firefox plugin, fireoffice. To use firefox as the platform and enable a simple office that runs in the browser.

Education

Semi-Open Source

• He says that this was the “primary reason” for removing Hibernate and would allow the company “more freedom and flexibility to make some decisions”. Once LGPL’d jBPM has been replaced with Activiti, there will be no LGPL components in Alfresco’s ECM platform.

BSD

• Chris Wilson of Intel back in July had written a branch of the Intel X.Org display driver (xf86-video-intel) that added back user-space mode-setting support to their open-source driver that did not need the Graphics Execution Manager (GEM) within the kernel to function. This code was previously stripped away from the driver previously since KMS+GEM is the future they wanted to head in, but for those with vintage Intel i8xx-era graphics hardware using these newer code paths frequently resulted in lock-ups and other problems. Rather than trying to solve the actual problem at hand of GEM and KMS for this old hardware, the easier solution was viewed to just add back non-GEM UMS support.

Government

• EU procurement rules say that public sector buyers cannot specify an ICT product or brand. That means the big suppliers, usually systems integrators, select the products, the brands, and the architecture.

Programming

• The more I write code and design systems, the more I understand that many times, you can achieve the desired functionality simply with clever reconfigurations of the basic Unix tool set. After all, functionality is an asset, but code is a liability. This is the opposite of a trend of nonsense called DevOps, where system administrators start writing unit tests and other things to help the developers warm up to them – Taco Bell Programming is about developers knowing enough about Ops (and Unix in general) so that they don’t overthink things, and arrive at simple, scalable solutions.

Standards/Consortia

• The W3C has updated its MathML standard for rendering mathematical notation on Web pages to better portray basic math symbols, as well as render mathematic symbols in more languages.

Leftovers

• Whatis42? writes in to let us know that Square Enix has sent a cease and desist letter to a guy who’s been developing an open source version of the game Carmageddon. Now, it’s almost certainly the case that this version does, in fact, violate the original copyrights (and potentially trademarks) of Square Enix, but should it really matter? The game is well over a decade old and not for sale anywhere anymore. The re-creation of the game appears to be a pretty cool learning experience for a developer and fans of the game.

• Answering a student question, Roberts admitted he doesn’t usually read the computer jargon that is a condition of accessing websites, and gave another example of fine print: the literature that accompanies medications, the AP story reports.

• It has “the smallest type you can imagine and you unfold it like a map,” he said. “It is a problem,” he added, “because the legal system obviously is to blame for that.” Providing too much information defeats the purpose of disclosure, since no one reads it, he said. “What the answer is,” he said, “I don’t know.”

• Are you struggling with or dreading the thought of IPv6?

• If so, Vint Cerf, much-decorated “Father of the Internet,” wants you to know that it’s OK to blame him. He certainly does so himself. In fact, he does so time and time and time again.

• It doesn’t feel like 2000 was all that long ago, does it? But on the Internet, a decade is a long time. Ten years ago we were in the era of the dot-com boom (and bust), the Web was strictly 1.0, and Google was just a baby.

• NaNoWriMo began as a small group of people who wanted to try their hands at writing a novel, but it quickly exploded into an International Internet novel writing extravaganza. Now it is a very large group of people all over the world who want to try their hand at writing a novel. (Love that Internet!)

Science

• The insurance industry is doing its best to create a tempest in a teapot.

• TO MAKE it harder for bioterrorists to build dangerous viruses from scratch, guidelines for firms who supply “custom DNA” are being introduced in the US.

• The US and other countries restrict who can work with certain germs, but it might be possible to build some viruses from their genes. A number of firms supply DNA sequences to order. A 2005 investigation by New Scientist raised alarms when it found that only five out of 12 of these firms in North America and Europe always screened orders for sequences that might be used in bioweapons.

• The amazing properties of graphene now include the ability to create mass, according to a new prediction.

Health/Nutrition

• The new MLR regulations might indeed cause a few inefficient health plans to either improve the way they do business or close up shop, but why is that a bad thing? Because it will “reduce choice?” One of the main objectives of reform is to reduce waste and ensure Americans get the value they deserve when they send in their premium payments every month. If the health plans that take our money but give us lousy coverage in return are forced out of the marketplace, I say good riddance, even if their departure means that the bigger and more efficient plans that offer better value pick up the customers they leave behind.

Security

Defence/Police/Aggression

• Greenwald asserted that part of the reason for the government’s rhetoric is its fear of damage that could be caused by WikiLeaks future leaks, and sure enough, it’s already urging news organizations not to publish information from WikiLeaks’ Iraq documents. At The Link, Nadim Kobeissi wrote an interesting account of the battle over WikiLeaks so far, characterizing it as a struggle between the free, open ethos of the web and the highly structured, hierarchical nature of the U.S. government. “No nation has ever fought, or even imagined, a war with a nation that has no homeland and a people with no identity,” Kobeissi said.

• The WikiLeaks website appears close to releasing what the Pentagon fears is the largest cache of secret U.S. documents in history — hundreds of thousands of intelligence reports compiled after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

• We speak to the nation’s most famous whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the secret history of the Vietnam War in 1971, just before he heads to London to participate in the WikiLeak press conference.

• A grim picture of the US and Britain’s legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.

• Protests by Tibetan students in western China over plans to restrict the use of their language have spread, according to state media and a campaign group.

• A source in Beijing said between 200 and 300 Tibetan students at the capital’s Central University for Nationalities held a peaceful demonstration this afternoon.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Two strains of the mosquito responsible for most malaria transmission in Africa are evolving into different species, meaning that techniques to control them may work on one type but not the other.

• Only 14 percent of Tea Party supporters believe global warming is a real environmental problem compared to 49 percent of the rest of the public, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. Global warming skepticism is an article of faith among Tea Party adherents, some of whom say they rely on the teachings of scripture and conservative opinion leaders as sources for their information about climate science. Tea Partiers’ beliefs on global warming agree with those of the fossil fuel industry, which funds the Tea Party movement. Following in the footsteps of the tobacco industry, the fossil fuel industry has carried on a longstanding, pervasive campaign to raise doubts about global warming science and undermine policies that to address it.

• At a candidate forum here last week, Representative Baron P. Hill, a threatened Democratic incumbent in a largely conservative southern Indiana district, was endeavoring to explain his unpopular vote for the House cap-and-trade energy bill.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• In the Center for Media and Democracy’s break-through article on the American Action Network, we highlighted the resumes of the billionaires, corporate executives, and right-wing political operatives behind the group. Americans have a right to know more about who these guys really are, starting with AAN board member Robert Steel.

• A few weeks ago, we broke the story of the grossly misleading American Action Network attack ad accusing Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold of creating the federal deficit. We pointed out how such claims are preposterous considering that those behind AAN and the anti-Feingold ads helped destroy the economy, and that some of AAN’s board members benefited personally from the Wall Street bailout spearheaded by the Bush Administration. The Washington, D.C.-based group, a 501(c) organization that receives anonymous corporate funding, has already spent $750,000 attacking Senator Feingold in television ads. Now, AAN is at it again, airing another misleading attack ad making similar claims.

• But many do not know that one man is particularly responsible for Citizens United and other challenges to fair election rules, and that his ironically-named “Committee for Truth in Politics” is one of the many groups fronting corporate dollars while pretending to be just like ordinary folk.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Of course, you can’t always believe what you read. Just because something is in print does not necessarily mean it is true or accurate, whether in a book, a newspaper or a web page. Wikipedia is certainly in error in conflating “violent revolutionary activities” with Malcolm X, who was himself non-violent like the majority of activists. It was only after Malcolm X was assasinated that his followers turned to “violent revolutionary activities.”

• I’ve never met Byron Sonne, and only heard about him recently. The publication ban means what I know about it is limited to what has already been published. Which may or may not be true. Still, there is enough there in the public record to cause me concern, which is why I’ve written a couple of blog posts about it.

• ABC, CBS and NBC are blocking TV programming on their websites from being viewable on Google Inc.’s new Web-TV service, exposing the rift that remains between the technology giant and some of the media companies it wants to supply content for its new products.

• New Democrat International Trade Critic Peter Julian is criticizing the Harper government’s lack of transparency surrounding the latest round of trade talks on a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the EU.

• In May we announced that we had mistakenly collected unencrypted WiFi payload data (information sent over networks) using our Street View cars. We work hard at Google to earn your trust, and we’re acutely aware that we failed badly here. So we’ve spent the past several months looking at how to strengthen our internal privacy and security practices, as well as talking to external regulators globally about possible improvements to our policies. Here’s a summary of the changes we’re now making.

• There was a time in the summer of 2008 when one could barely turn on the television without seeing former Home Office Minister Tony McNulty’s sturdy defences of the Labour Party’s approach to law and order. A stronger supporter of ID cards and ninety day incarceration it was impossible to find.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Earlier in the same session, Angus filed a petition in the House from people concerned with the digital lock provisions, calling on Parliament to restore balance on the issue.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Citing comments made at a State Council meeting at which Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao presided, the Xinhua News Agency reported this week that the goal is to clamp down on both the import and export of phony software, DVDs, publications, and other products that violate trademarks and patents.

• On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care. At the same time, in some poor countries, cultural models and social norms of behaviour persist which hinder the process of development.”

• Those already convinced by the general argument against IP thus have much to learn in this course, which will deepen and extend their understanding of not only IP theory but also libertarian theory and economics. The course is also ideal for those who are on the fence, or who are confused, about IP; no intellectual conformity is required. Libertarians who think there are good arguments for IP are also welcome — at the least, they can test their arguments against the best we critics have to offer, and perhaps strengthen, modify, or deepen their own views about the nature of ideas, government, and property rights.

Copyrights

• So it’s okay for the US government to censor the web, because other countries censor as well? I recognize that their argument is that this won’t change how other countries view censorship, but even that’s wrong. The US is pressuring other countries not to censor the web by claiming a moral high ground. It seems particularly hypocritical to undermine that moral high ground by blatantly censoring the web as well, and then saying “but it’s okay for us, because it’s about protecting these companies.” That just makes it easy for those other countries to respond, “well, then it’s okay for us, because it’s about protecting our government/way of life/etc.”

• Dozens of the largest content companies, including video game maker Activision, media firms NBC Universal and Viacom, and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) endorsed the bill in a letter to the U.S. Senate. So did Major League Baseball and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

• Admittedly, Hulu is apparently getting pressure from the TV companies to do these blocks, but it still makes no sense. All things like Boxee and Google TV are doing is providing a browser. As Danny notes, if I just hooked up my laptop to the same TV, I could watch Hulu just fine. Why is it a problem if it’s using a different piece of hardware? It makes no sense.

• The message that announced the trapped Chile miners were alive and well is now the copyright of the man who wrote it.

• Three weeks after the first warning messages were sent by email to online infringers, French body HADOPI remains quiet on the process and its results.

• However, Billboard.biz has learned that rights-holders are reporting 25,000 music related copyright infringements to HADOPI every day. HADOPI was launched by the government to handle the three-strikes anti-piracy system.

ACTA

• The October 2010 version of the ACTA text is inconsistent with several areas of U.S. law, and proposals for new laws in the areas of the reform of patent damages and access to orphaned copyrighted works. In particular, the obligations in the ACTA text do not incorporate many of the areas of limitations and exceptions to remedies found in U.S. law, and in the statutes of some other countries.

• Observations:

• * The second part of her question goes to the heart of the criminal chapter. The Criminal chapter of ACTA corresponds to the proposed Criminal Enforcement Directive (“IPRED2″) under Art 83 legal base which failed to reach Council consensus. Recently the European Commission has withdrawn the IPRED2 proposal and thus terminated the IPRED2 directive process. * Comparison: ACTA Criminal Chapter: Negotiated behind closed doors by the Council Presidency with external Trade partners. Parliament(s) may ratify ACTA. No corresponding Acquis existing. IPRED2: Legal base Art 83 limits the extent of EU harmonisation. Ordinary Legislative Process. Full democratic scrutiny by Parliament. Adoption would make the act part of the Acquis. * Result: Council attempts to circumvent the new Lisbon powers of the European Parliament under Art 83 via Art 207. It is a highly sensitive constitutional question if a circumvention is permissible. * No Acquis for criminal enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights is available as the MEPs stress, not even a pending proposal anymore. For clarity, Acquis Communautaire = “body of law accumulated by the European Union”. Acquis is EU level law. Even an identical legal status quo in all EU member states would not constitute the Acquis. Neither does the EU competence under Art 83 qualify as Acquis unless an act is adopted under that legal base.

• The list of directives above indicates what parts of the Acquis (body of adopted EU level law) would be affected by an adoption of ACTA. The Commissioner says that the Acquis won’t be affected at all, no change of the EU legal environement was required. Many civil society and industry groups claim ACTA has effects on the internet. Many Members of Parliament don’t believe the Commission because it would make ACTA pretty baseless. And ironically in other nations they tell the public the same tales, that it won’t change their law. Check the facts!

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