● 12.22.10

● Links 22/12/2010: Red Hat Net Income Up 59 Percent, Linux 2.6.37 RC 7, Nautilus 3.0

Posted in News Roundup at 5:29 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• We have seen plenty of hacks for AirPlay that extend the service and allow it to operate on things that Apple never really intended. Last month AirPlay was hacked to run on all iDevices for sending video.

Server

• Today, December 20th, Ubuntu is running 4,840 instances on EC2, followed by CentOS, with 1,250, Fedora with 313; Oracle with 80; and Red Hat with a mere 73 instances. That’s a grand total of 1,716 for the Red Hat family, which means that Ubuntu is doing more than twice as well as all the Red Hat variants put together.

• As said in the introduction, benchmarks from other Linux distributions / AMIs will be forthcoming in the new year along with results from other, more powerful EC2 compute instances. We also invite your feedback on other cloud computing benchmarks you would like to see.

• The Times maintains an interactive news department to serve website readers with graphs, charts and other enhanced content. Over time, the department has built up a cloud software stack to serve these projects, Koski said. Typically, the department’s projects are written using the Ruby on Rails framework, with the data stored on a MySQL database running on Amazon’s RDB (Relational Database Service). The Web apps themselves are run on Amazon’s EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud).

• Red Hat on Tuesday delivered strong third quarter results as it continued to ride along with the server and data center upgrade cycle.

• The company reported fiscal third quarter earnings of $26 million, or 13 cents a share, on revenue of $235.6 million, up 21 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 20 cents a share. Wall Street was looking for earnings of 20 cents a share on revenue of $227.3 million.

• Linux software developer Red Hat Inc. said Tuesday that its third-quarter net income rose 59 percent thanks to demand for virtual computer systems and so-called cloud computing services, in which applications and data are housed on distant servers.

• Business software maker Red Hat Inc (RHT.N) reported higher quarterly profit, echoing optimism about the technology spending climate shown by bigger industry companies last week.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Bradley and Karen welcome special co-presenter and guest, Aaron Williamson, to discuss the OpenBSD email regarding purported FBI backdoors. In the main segment, they discuss the amicus brief filed by SFLC (where Aaron and Karen work) in the Global-Tech Appliances v. SEB USA Supreme Court case.

Kernel Space

Applications

• PhotoFilmStrip 1.4.0 was released yesterday, bringing (some of these features were already available in the unstable version like you can read in our PhotoFilmStrip review) a new user interface, customizable aspect ratio (16:9, 4:3 und 3:2), copy and paste for motion positions, Flash-Video renderer, a new transition (roll), better audio support, keyboard shortcuts and more.

• No-one goes out of their way to lose their laptop let alone have it stolen. Usually in these situations there is a slim chance of getting you laptop back – providing it has your address scrawled on the back like a label in the back of a 5th graders’ coat.

• The second beta of the Muon Package Management Suite (as well as its supporting library LibQApt) version 1.1 is now available. The focus of this release is to fix bugs found during the testing of the first beta, as well as UI tweaks to the new Muon Software Center. Packages for K/Ubuntu 10.10 are available from the QApt PPA. (Of interest are the muon and muon-installer packages)

• GCstar Collections Manager stores details on each item and can be tailored for additional information such as location or to whom you lent it. It lets you search and filter your collection by many criteria.

• Tellico specializes in tracking eclectic collections such as your books, videos, music, liquor inventory and anything else. It comes loaded with many default templates for cataloging books, bibliographies, videos, music, video games, coins, stamps, trading cards, comic books and more.

• Kabikaboo is a simple tree-branch note organizer. At first blush, including it with the other two picks this week might seem to be a stretch. Designed initially as an aid in tracking notes for writing things like novels, it is a tree-based note pad. This makes it ideal to plan a book or any other complex project involving structured notes or organized outlines.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• For the next three days you can donate any amount you wish and receive each of the following DRM free, cross platform games:

• * Braid * Cortex Command * Machinarium * Osmos * Revenge of the Titans

• The cost of buying each of these games separately would be around 85$.

• Christmas is approaching and the crazy sales are starting. How can a humble bundle stay relevant?

• Well, I heard you guys liked bundles so I decided to put a bundle in your bundle.

• All six Humble Indie Bundle #1 games are now included on your download page.

• Enjoy!

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• Ok, it’s been over three weeks since when I got my windows-free laptop. During this time, I’ve ran KUbuntu 10.10 with KDE 4.5.? for about a week, then I moved to KDE trunk as usual and now it’s time to share my two cents (and personal random thoughts and rants) about this laptop

GNOME Desktop

• Last week, Cosimo Cecchi, Nautilus hacker extraordinaire, sent a message to the Nautilus list setting out a plan for 3.0. Before I get onto that, I want to give a shout out to Cosimo. He’s a total hero when it comes to Nautilus: not only does he take care of a much of the (substantial) maintenance work that is required, but he also takes UX really seriously and has been working hard to get the Nautilus UI into better shape. The next release is already going to be really nice thanks to his efforts. Thanks for your hard work, Cosimo!

Distributions

• Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distribution, and it brings with it, alongside its famous rock-solid stability, a couple of quirks and anachronisms. For example, it is one of the few distributions that provides no form of dependency management; users need to install all dependent packages manually.

• The Unity project, not to confuse with the desktop environment, has had their first full release in July 2010 and have recently updated with a second point release.

• If you have been exploring the world of Linux for any amount of time then odds are you have come across the website Distro Watch at some point or another.

• Puppy Linux is the smallest release on this list.

New Releases

• Marking nearly 10 years of Openwall GNU/*/Linux, the Openwall Project developers have released version 3.0 of Openwall. Openwall GNU/*/Linux, also known as Owl for short, is a small, security-enhanced distribution of Linux aimed at servers, appliances and virtual appliances.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• Mandriva was holding a contest for desktop background wallpapers to include in its next release, Mandriva 2010.2. This morning the winners were announced.

Red Hat Family

• Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) stayed on pace Tuesday in its march toward becoming a $1 billion a year revenue producer, reporting third-quarter revenues of $235.6 million.

• The question is whether RHEL6 is the right answer for your business. The cheapest subscriptions from Red Hat cost $349 a year for “self-support,” and about $800 a year for a “standard” server subscription with Web-only support and a two-day response window.

• The prices go up from there, and if you want a premium support package for a heftier machine (4-sockets, or CPUs) with unlimited virtual machines, it’s going to set your business back nearly $4,000. Note that this is Red Hat’s SMB pricing, its regular pricing is a bit higher for the higher-end products — but oddly its low-end pricing is the same.

• There’s always a sense of finally when a new version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is released. We always know what’s coming in the new OS, and generally we know when it’ll be available, but we’re still working with rapidly aging packages on the previous version and drumming our fingers for the next release.

• Revenues rose at an impressive rate for open source experts Red Hat in the last three months.

• The company reported its third quarter results today, showing revenues of $235.6 million (£152.4 million), up by 21 per cent from the same period last year.

Debian Family

Canonical/Ubuntu

• The Ubuntu font family has been added to the Google Font Directory, allowing web developers the world over to use the font on their site.

• I’ve been finding it difficult to balance my work on the GNOME and Ubuntu documentation recently. Apart from the usual lack of time, the increasingly divergent directions of the two projects have seemed difficult to reconcile in the help we provide. Ubuntu has always customised GNOME, but with the recent announcement that Ubuntu 11.04 will default to Unity rather than the new GNOME shell, I think we may have lost a great deal of the practical documentation compatibility between the two. This is a shame, because the differences between shells are really only superficial. Unfortunately, details matter in user help.

• We all know about Unity, the project that is changing the way we interact with our computer by bringing a consistent user experience and a solid, elegant design for desktop and netbook users.

• We want to make sure Unity is for everyone, and one of the key aspects to make it possible is that it is available in everyone’s language.

• Elephants and readers with a good memory may remember an ‘ambient boot splash’ proposal we featured at the end of October.

• First off, my apologies for such a late showing of this review. I always take notes as I test a new distro and I was going to write this review using my handy-dandy Android app, so I took my little paper and stuck it in a pocket..somewhere. I finally located it today, which is the reason for my tardiness. Now that my groveling is complete, awayyyy we go!

Flavours and Variants

• Pinguy OS is undoubtedly the best Ubuntu derivative I have used and I won’t mind rating it even above Linux Mint. I would prefer a much lighter version of Pinguy OS though. So, next time when a wannabe Linux user comes to me asking for a good Linux desktop that just works, Pinguy OS will be my first choice.

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Android

• “Nexus S has been rooted, let the madness commence!” proclaims Engadget. “This is only possible because Android’s security is crap and it’s exploited easily to gain root priviledges [sic]” adds a commenter.

• You’ll have to excuse me if I strongly disagree.

• The Nexus S, like the Nexus One before it, is designed to allow enthusiasts to install custom operating systems. Allowing your own boot image on a pure Nexus S is as simple as running fastboot oem unlock. It should be no surprise that modifying the operating system can give you root access to your phone. Hopefully that’s just the beginning of the changes you might make.

• Still haven’t found that last minute gadget goodie? Stuff a stocking with one of Sprint’s Android smartphones. From AndroidTapp.com’s top 2010 smartphone pick HTC EVO 4G to Sprint ID packing Samsung Transform, we’ve listed last minute holiday deals.

• In a statement on the official Android developer blog, Google security engineer Nick Kralevich highlighted the relative openness of Google’s new Nexus S smartphone, confirming that it provides a simple and easy way to unlock the bootloader for the purpose of installing third-party firmware—much like its predecessor, the Nexus One.

Tablets

• EDUCATION HARDWARE MAKER Kno has started shipping its single-screen and dual-screen 14.1-inch touchscreen Linux-based tablets.

Free Software/Open Source

• The CENATIC Foundation, in keeping with its objective of raising awareness about open source technologies, regularly releases research reports that study the different aspects of open source software.

• Peter Brown, the executive director of the Free Software Foundation, suggested to me that Oracle has still to develop a coherent free software policy, but the decisions made by individual corporate units have caused shockwaves throughout FOSS in the last year — everything from a campaign to prevent Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL by Monty Widenius to the forking of LibreOffice from OpenOffice.org (see below). Such reactions leave little doubt that the community lacks confidence in Oracle as a steward for its FOSS acquisitions.

Events

• Open Source Business Intelligence Intro – This webinar illustrates the state of the art of Open Source BI and provides an overview of the main solutions available for DWH and BI suites.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Firefox is due to release an eighth Firefox 4 beta. Not to be confused with a fourth Firefox 8 beta.

• The latest test version of Firefox 4 – due for an official debut next year – was scheduled to go live on Tuesday. Mozilla hasn’t added any new tools, but according to the release notes, the open sourcers have polished a few things, including the browser’s Sync service, which synchronizes bookmarks, history, and other setting across multiple devices; its WebGL 3D rendering tech; and its add-ons manager.

• Hard on the heels of Microsoft’s decision to offer “do not track” functionality in its upcoming Internet Explorer 9 browser comes word that Mozilla is planning a similar move for its Firefox 4.

• In March of this year we kicked up a process to update the Mozilla Public License. We recently released the first beta of the MPL 2.0 and we believe that this beta is now feature complete, meaning that it addresses all major known issues. Of course if there are policy changes that come up and need to be made we will address them. We’ve kept both OSI and the FSF appraised of our efforts. We’ll be submitting the final versions for approval, and we believe that the MPL 2.0 meets all requirements for approval of these organizations.

Google

• Google will open source two of the Java Eclipse coding tools it acquired with its purchase of Java-obsessed outfit Instantiations.

• Less than five months after paying an undisclosed sum for Instantiations, Mountain View has announced that it will donate the source code and IP for Instantiations’ WindowBuilder and CodePro Profiler tools to the open source community via the Eclipse Foundation. According to Google, the code and IP is worth more than $5m.

• Google has launched an official YouTube channel for its Open Source Programs Office (OSPO). According to Google Open Source Team member Ellen Ko, the new channel is aimed at organizing videos related to Google and other open source projects in a single place.

Databases

• The winner was HBase, the open source distributed database modeled after Google’s proprietary BigTable platform. Facebook was already using MySQL for message storage, the open source Cassandra platform for inbox search, and the proprietary Haystack platform for storing photos. But in the company’s mind, HBase was better equipped to handle a new-age messaging system that would seek to seamlessly juggle email, chat, and SMS as well as traditional on-site Facebook messages.

• For the curious: the MariaDB project has posted a draft trademark policy. They try hard to cover all the bases.

• We wanted to make something that should work well, both for open source and commercial usage (and yes, I know that in some cases these are one and the same), which is not very common with many other trademark policies. My belief is that by having a very liberal trademark policy we will create a bigger ecosystem around MariaDB which will help all of us.

Oracle

• Checking that nothing (or almost nothing) needs to be rebuild is faster. On a sample system (Notebook with Core2Duo, 2 GHz) on Windows XP (anti virus software installed), rechecking that nothing needs to be done for module sw takes 7 sec with a warm cache. On the same machine build.pl/dmake took 210 sec with the same “full” header dependencies.

CMS

• Drupal 7 has been a multi-year effort on behalf of over 1,000 contributors. Since February 2008, we’ve manged to make enormous improvements; it is a true metamorphosis for designers, developers, and administrators.

• The last months we’ve seen Drupal 7 getting steadily closer to its release and critical issues dealt with one by one. Release management is not always easy, and I’ve always based my decisions part on data, and part on my “gut”. Both are indicating that it is time to release Drupal 7. It is important to all of us in the Drupal community.

• I feel the same way about Drupal 7. Seeing Drupal 7 getting steadily closer to its release, is like watching a cocoon grow into a butterfly: the inevitable results are going to be spectacular. Release management and fixing bugs is hard work, the work of a determined caterpillar. However, I think Drupal 7 will be quite a metamorphosis relative to Drupal 6. Not only will it look different, it will function differently — making users and developers feel like Drupal spouted wings.

BSD

• In further developments, de Raadt said yesterday that Angelos had worked on the cypto stack in question for four years when accepting a contract at NETSEC. Angelos “wrote the crypto layer that permits our ipsec stack to hand-off requests to the drivers that Jason worked on. That crypto layer ontained the half-assed insecure idea of half-IV that the US govt was pushing at that time. Soon after his contract was over this was ripped out.”

• de Raadt further said, “I believe that NETSEC was probably contracted to write backdoors as alleged.

• If those were written, I don’t believe they made it into our tree. They might have been deployed as their own product.

• If such NETSEC projects exists, I don’t know if Jason, Angelos or others knew or participated in such NETSEC projects.”

• [...]

• Audits and overall basic cleanup of code continues.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• It feels like every day this past year, we woke to news of an assault on our freedoms engineered through software: companies pilfering from our free software commons, device manufacturers remotely deleting ebooks behind readers’ backs, Big Media hatching new schemes for digital restrictions and spying, and governments around the world conspiring to expand and coordinate their digital subjugation of citizens.

• The word “community” gets bandied about, but in these times, it really is important that we build professional and social solidarity around a core set of ideals. It’s critical that we hang together, both to advance our positive ideas for a better world and to stop those trying to turn software against its users.

• From its beginnings, free software has been about community.

Project Releases

• OpenDJ is a new LDAPv3 compliant directory service, developed for the Java platform, providing a high performance, highly available and secure store for the identities managed by enterprises. Its easy installation process, combined with the power of the Java platform makes of OpenDJ the simplest and fastest directory server to deploy and manage.

Government

Openness/Sharing

• As we come to the end of this year’s fundraising campaign, I asked the organizers to let me write you to tell you about an extraordinary birthday present that Creative Commons received on its 8th birthday last Thursday.

• You probably know that for the past two years, Creative Commons has been incredibly fortunate to have the pro bono leadership of our CEO, Joi Ito. Joi is a successful internet investor. He has been at the birth of companies such as Moveable Type, Technorati and Twitter. For the past 7 years, he’s also been a key leader on our board. But by far his most important contribution began two years ago when my own commitments made it necessary for me to step down as CEO. With the organization in a pinch, he volunteered to take the lead, again, as a volunteer.

• Everyone recognized at the time that this sort of sacrifice could only be temporary. Yet from the time he stepped up, my biggest fear was that when he could no longer make this sacrifice, we would have no one comparable to tap. Last Thursday, I was proven wrong.

• So what does that have to do with video delivery? For starters, we’re seeing a similar reluctance to give consumers easy access to shows. What’s worse is that the video industry is even more ripe for monetization than the record industry of 1999. Media convergence devices and software such as Boxee (Linux-based), GoogleTV (also Linux-based), and others are attempting to bring together all video content on the web in one device.

Leftovers

• INDIA IS STILL PLANNING to develop its own proprietary operating system (OS) rather than use “bugged” Western systems.

• [...]

• “Second part is software. Most of us use commercial software available in the country. We have got Windows and some use Linux. These software packages are likely to be bugged.”

• Yahoo! just posted a statement on the official blog of Delicious, the popular social bookmarking service it was reported yesterday to be in the process of closing down. The blog is hard to reach due to traffic, so we’ve posted the full text below.

• Bloomberg’s operation, Bloomberg Government, which will have 150 journalists and analysts on staff by the end of 2011 and a complete staff of 300, will charge $5,700 per user. The Bloomberg Government unit joins a Bloomberg News bureau of 175 journalists. Politico Pro intends to charge on a sliding scale, the New York Times reports—”$1,495 to $2,500 a year for the first topic and $1,000 for each subsequent topic.” The Times was silent on whether the Politico Pro subscription would include a sluice box, pan, and dry washer. Meanwhile, one of the granddaddies of high-price policy journalism, Atlantic Media’s National Journal, has used buyouts to dismantle and rebuild itself into a Web and print harvester of free and premium Beltway news across its brands—NationalJournal.com, National Journal Daily, National Journal, National Journal Hotline, and more. Meanwhile, CQ Roll Call, owned by the Economist people, keeps on keeping on with its own lucrative Chinese menu of data services and publications for observers of official Washington.

Science

• An international group of researchers has figured out how to encode information within the spin of an electron, a technique that may one day lead to smaller, faster memory for computers.

Security

• But I’ve had a published email address for more than a decade. It’s pretty much the only email address I use (more on this later), and yes, I get a lot of spam there. But I’m not convinced that keeping an email address secret is anything but a fool’s errand.

• The main reason to keep one’s email address secret is to hide from the spambots – those nefarious snafflers of unguarded email addresses that act as input for all the unsolicited email that unscrupulous huxters and scammers firehose over our inboxes.

Defence/Police/Aggression

• A Toronto police constable accused of assaulting G20 protester Adam Nobody has become the first and only officer charged in connection with allegations of excessive force at the June summit.

• The Special Investigations Unit has issued an announcement that “Constable Babak Andalib-Goortani has this morning been charged with assault with a weapon” in connection with the arrest of protester Adam Nobody during the G20.

• The G20 protester whose violent arrest was caught on video and caused controversy when no officers were initially held responsible said he’s glad a police officer has been charged.

• But protester Adam Nobody and his lawyers called on Toronto’s police chief on Tuesday to help identify other officers who were involved in the case.

• Toronto police Const. Babak Andalib-Goortani was charged Tuesday with assault with a weapon in the takedown of Nobody at the Ontario legislature during the June summit.

• The CIA rendition of cleric Abu Omar in 2003 turned into a headache for Washington when a Milan court indicted the agents involved. Secret dispatches now show how the US threatened the Italian government in an attempt to influence the case. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was apparently happy to help.

• This is all important. Being able to record the police is one of the best ways to ensure that the police are held accountable for their actions. Privacy has to be viewed in the context of relative power. For example, the government has a lot more power than the people. So privacy for the government increases their power and increases the power imbalance between government and the people; it decreases liberty. Forced openness in government — open government laws, Freedom of Information Act filings, the recording of police officers and other government officials, WikiLeaks — reduces the power imbalance between government and the people, and increases liberty.

• Moving to crack down on gun smugglers, the federal agency that monitors weapons sales is asking the White House for emergency authority to require that dealers near the Mexican border report multiple purchases of high powered rifles.

Cablegate

• Whether or not Wikileaks turns out to be a watershed in politics, there’s another question of more immediate interest to the open source world: can the latter learn a key lesson from the measures taken against the Wikileaks operation?

• In an interview with CNET, attorney Claes Borgström said, “I’m getting e-mails where people ask me how much the U.S. administration pays me to pursue this case.”

• He denies any connection, emphasizing that his clients are two ordinary Swedish women who have no motive to interfere with WikiLeaks document-sharing activities, which have increasingly irked the U.S. government. “In fact, both my clients are supporters of WikiLeaks,” he said.

• Speaking from the mansion in south east England that he is forced to stay at under the terms of his bail (or “Hi-tech house arrest”, as he described it in the interview), Assange discussed what WikiLeaks had achieved and how he sees himself. It appears he views himself as a martyr and is still perfectly happy with himself and the actions he’s taken following his recent jail time.

• Please take action TODAY to speak out against the intolerable conditions of Brad’s imprisonment. A press release we sent out today detailing some of those conditions and pointing to other reporting on the topic follows.

• 2:25 Hypocrisy Alert: Sarah Palin in new op-ed for USA Today hits Iran by citing cables leaked by man she has attacked strongly — Julian Assange. Goes on and on about it in key opening paragraph. Two weeks ago she wrote on Facebook that he should be hunted down like Osame bin Laden, adding: “He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.” Today: Hey, Julian, baby, thanks for the cables on Iran!

• Am I the only one angry that the current administration of the University of Calgary doesn’t think Tom Flanagan has done anything wrong?

• In case you missed it, Tom Flanagan, formerly a mentor/adviser to our sitting Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, currently a Political Science professor at the University of Calgary, broke the law while on the CBC news program “Power and Politics with Evan Solomon” when he “counsel[ed] other persons to commit offences.” The indictable offence he advocated was the assassination of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

• [...]

• Tom Flanagan was a chief of staff and policy adviser for the Prime Minister of Canada.

• The Nation’s Greg Mitchell, who’s been blogging obsessively on WikiLeaks, points out that Sarah Palin is now citing revelations from the leaked cache of State Dept. cables just weeks after condemning Julian Assange.

• Later, in response to a question of whether he sees himself as a “messianic” figure, Assange replies with what’s sure to become a widely quoted line: “Everyone would like to be a messianic figure without dying.”

• The Guardian has posted two Wikileaks cables that focus on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The first is from Italy in November 2008. It provides a useful reminder that the U.S. at one time hoped to conclude the ACTA negotiations by the end of 2008 (and the George Bush term).

• Doug: The whole idea of Wikileaks is terrific. They’ve become one of the most important watchdog organizations on the planet, helping to expose a lot of government action for what it really is.

• Military courts have consistently asserted Article 13 protection broadly to protect servicemembers awaiting trial. Illegal pretrial punishment can take many forms. The most common examples are unreasonable or harassing restraint that creates an appearance that the servicemember is guilty and onerous pretrial confinement conditions. Article 13 provides that pretrial confinement should not be “more rigorous than the circumstances require to insure” the servicemember’s presence at court. “Conditions that are sufficiently egregious may give rise to a permissive inference that an accused is being punished. . . .” United States v. King, 61 M.J. 225, 227-28 (C.A.A.F. 2005); see also United States v. Crawford, 62 M.J. 411 (C.A.A.F. 2006). Arbitrary or purposeless conditions also can be considered to raise an inference of punishment. King, 61 M.J. at 227-28 (citing United States v. James, 28 M.J. 214, 216 (C.M.A. 1989)).

• A defense motion for Article 13 credit is generally made before pleas are entered. As such, the first time this issue can be raised is once the case is referred to a court-martial. The issue of whether there is a violation of Article 13 is litigated in a pretrial motion hearing. At this hearing, the defense may call witness and the accused may testify concerning the nature of the pretrial confinement conditions. The defense carries the burden by a preponderance of the evidence to show a violation of Article 13.

• On Twitter I see random messages making broad statements about men re the rape charges against Julian Assange. I think we’re going into dangerous territory, and there’s a good chance we’re being manipulated, and before it goes too far, I want to try to moderate it, and talk about what we know and what we don’t know. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

• 1. As far as I know there aren’t any charges against Julian Assange, in Sweden or elsewhere. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

• 2. What I’ve read in the Guardian about the charges sound to me like he might not be a very nice person. But where I come from, that is not a crime — nor is it in Sweden, which seems like a fair country. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

• 3. Rape is awful. But I think it’s almost as awful to falsely accuse someone of rape, because that’s going to radically change an innocent person’s life, for the worse. And it’s so easy to do, it’s one person’s word against another’s. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

• According to a report today in Norway’s top business publication, the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has managed to get a hold of the entire “Cablegate” database of some 250,000 diplomatic cables—Wikileaks has not granted any news organization this access, and has instead been providing access to relatively small batches, one at a time (what the Herald Sun calls “drip-feeding”). How did Aftonbladet get access? They won’t say, and Wikileaks won’t either, but one guess could involve the database being stored on a server within Norway.

• Love him or hate him, Julian Assange has become the (rather handsome, if a bit pasty) face of the global movement for government and corporate transparency. Through WikiLeaks, Assange has, arguably, helped release more classified information than the rest of the entire world press combined. Assange says this reveals the “perilous state of the rest of the media” and rightly asks how a team as small as his could accomplish such a feat in just four years of existence. WikiLeaks has hit all the bases – the media, governments, and corporations are all scrambling to address the consequences of the leaks. Beyond the damage control and the dirty tricks, a radical and fundamental shift in the balance of power is underway. Let’s just say that folks aren’t calling Assange an anarchist for nothing. But what is the rationale behind WikiLeaks, its methods, its goals? Don’t expect an answer from the media. The reasons behind the project have long been overlooked by the mainstream press, captivated as it is with its own sensationalistic ‘hit pieces’ on Assange month after month and its alarmist or just plain misguided attempts to explain how and why WikiLeaks presumes to “open governments” as only it can.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• The weather we get in UK winters, for example, is strongly linked to the contrasting pressure between the Icelandic low and the Azores high. When there’s a big pressure difference the winds come in from the south-west, bringing mild damp weather from the Atlantic. When there’s a smaller gradient, air is often able to flow down from the Arctic. High pressure in the icy north last winter, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, blocked the usual pattern and “allowed cold air from the Arctic to penetrate all the way into Europe, eastern China, and Washington DC”. Nasa reports that the same thing is happening this winter.

Finance

• Bonus season is fast approaching on Wall Street, but this year the talk does not center just on multimillion-dollar paydays. It’s about a new club that no one wants to join: the Zeros.

• Perrenial warrior against naked short selling and Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne has amended a previously filed lawsuit against Goldma Sachs and Merrill Lynch to include charges under New Jersey RICO laws.

• The original lawsuit, filed in the California superior court in San Francisco, alleged that Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch unit engaged in a “massive, illegal stock market manipulation scheme” that involved so-called naked short-selling.

• I have an opinion about CNBC. I believe this network comes to the aid of Goldman Sachs, other major Wall Street firms, and the insider trading syndicate. I believe that this company has an interest in luring retail investors into the investment trap that is the stock market. This is purely my opinion, but there are some tell tale signs that my opinion may be true. No one is accusing CNBC of taking money from Goldman Sachs. No one is accusing Jim Cramer, or CNBC editor John Carney (formerly of Clusterstock), or Erin Burnett of taking money from the TBTF banksters or anyone else directly.

PR/Murdoch

• The European Commission’s antitrust investigators say competition would not be weakened if News Corp (NSDQ: NWS) buys the 60.9 percent of UK satcaster and telco BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) it doesn’t already own (case notes).

• Business Secretary Vince Cable will stay in cabinet despite “declaring war” on Rupert Murdoch, says Downing Street.

• But he will be stripped of his powers to rule on Mr Murdoch’s bid to take control of BSkyB, which will be handed to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

• Downing Street said David Cameron believed Mr Cable’s comments about Mr Murdoch were “totally unacceptable and inappropriate”.

• As can be seen from the table, as of September 2010, Venezuelan state TV channels had just a 5.4 percent audience share. Of the other 94.6 percent of the audience, 61.4 percent were watching privately owned television channels, and 33.1 percent were watching paid TV.

• Vince Cable’s career was hanging in the balance today after it was revealed that the business secretary told two undercover reporters he had “declared war” on Rupert Murdoch and said: “I think we are going to win.”

• His Labour shadow, John Denham, said the business secretary’s comments, which referred to his intervention on public interest grounds in News Corporation’s bid for full control of BSkyB, should raise “grave doubts” for the prime minister, David Cameron, over Cable’s integrity and judgment.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• The bill abolishing the National Identity Scheme is expected to gain royal assent later today.

• The Home Office said that it expected the identity documents bill would be passed into law on 21 December. As a result, existing ID cards will be invalid for use in a month’s time.

• Home office minister Damian Green said the bill’s passing will also allow work to begin on the secure destruction of the National Identity Register. “Photographs, fingerprints and personal information that were submitted as part of the application process for an ID card will be destroyed within two months,” he wrote in an article for Guardian.co.uk.

• A Japanese woman is suing Google for displaying images of underwear hanging on her washing line on its Street View function.

• # Privacy is the lifecycle of secrets once you have chosen to share them. Anonymity is where an act is publicly known but the actor is not. # Privacy is the duty to respect the data that has been disclosed to you. Anonymity is the right not to disclose the data in the first place.

• The use of mobile management tools can help, as they can disable cameras and so forth on several popular devices. The catch is that the devices have to be actually managed — a person who brings in a personal device and never accesses the corporate network won’t ever get managed by IT’s mobile management tool. Plus, even for managed devices, the tools today aren’t sophisticated enough to, say, disallow use of the camera within the employer facilities but allow it elsewhere, to prevent only problematic photo-taking.

• Looks like we hit the nail on the head with this one. As we recounted just last month in the post “Location, Location, Location”, location privacy was a huge issue this year both in the courts and in Congress. It’s also been a big focus of our work here at EFF, where we brought home two major court victories that strengthened your rights against location tracking by the government, whether through your cell phone or a GPS device attached to your car.

• On January 1st, Hungary will take over the Presidency of the EU Council. On the same day, a controversial new law will come into force that even the OSCE’s media freedom representative has openly criticised – arguing in a recent report that “regulating online media is not only technologically impossible but it exerts a chilling, self-censoring effect on free expression.”

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• How high are international data roaming rates? I have direct evidence from two providers: an Italian provider TIM charges about $10 per megabyte; a U.S. provider T-mobile charges $15 per megabyte. The typical business user uses receives about 15 megabytes per day of email. My smartphone uses about four times this. By way of contrast, you can buy a SIM from Vodafone UK with 30 megabytes of data for about $30. Wifi at the airport or a hotel runs about $10-$60 per day. Over-the-air prices charged to local customers is much lower: TIM charges $25 per month for 5 gigabytes of data, of which probably about 2 gigs is actually used, so the effective rate is about $0.0125 per megabyte. T-mobile in the US charges a similar amount for similar service.,

• Late Monday, a majority of the FCC’s commissioners indicated that they’re going to vote with Chairman Julius Genachowski for a toothless Net Neutrality rule.

• According to all reports, the rule, which will be voted on during tomorrow’s FCC meeting, falls drastically short of earlier pledges by President Obama and the FCC Chairman to protect the free and open Internet.

• I have always loved humor and laughter. As a young engineer I got an impulse to start a Dial-a-Joke in the San Jose/San Francisco area. I was aware of such humor services in other countries, such as Australia. This idea came from my belief in laughter. I could scarcely believe that I was the first person to create such a simple service in my region. Why was I the first? This was 1972 and it was illegal in the U.S. to use your own telephone. It was illegal in the U.S. to use your own answering machine. Hence it also virtually impossible to buy or own such devices. We had a monopoly phone system in our country then.

• Now, we obviously love Android, and there’s no doubt that Google’s OS has been part of some wonderfully furious competition in the mobile space recently. But we’re not sure any of that has anything to do with net neutrality — it doesn’t matter how open your OS is when you’re stuck with a filtered and throttled connection, and it’s a pretty huge stretch to think Android’s openness (however you want to define it) has anything to do with network access itself.

• THE IRONICALLY TITLED LAND OF THE FREE today will decide if people and companies with money should have better and faster access to the worldwide web.

• Giant Internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast and Verizon want to offer better access to corporations that can afford to pay for it. Standing in their way is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which has the power to issue regulations to protect net neutrality.

• Like we mentioned yesterday, unfortunately for the US the FCC has been keen to listen attentively to corporate interests, and draft regulations written by FCC chairman Julius Genachowski suggest that the telecoms and ISPs will win almost all they wanted.

Intellectual Monopolies

• A funny thing happens as a Congressional session comes to a close. Priorities, whether political or policy, rocket to the surface. It becomes a war of attrition, of who can keep things ‘out of sight, out of mind’ before people get tired and want to go home.

• But, there are always numerous pieces of legislation that don’t get much love either way. The problem is, although they technically “go away” for now, the ideas behind them aren’t dead.

• One we could easily miss is this year’s “Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Act.” Its focus? Bringing copyrights to fashion design. This legislation (S.3728) has been around in some form or another since 2006.

• Now, I never thought I would be writing about fashion and government on opensource.com, or anywhere else, but here we are. Planet Money brought this whole issue to my attention in a short, but worthwhile piece.

• Clearly, clothing and accessories, however utilitarian or avant garde, aren’t software. But, their design is still a creative endeavor, and likewise one that borrows heavily from previous works.

• The Government has asked businesses how it can help them to make more use of intellectual property (IP) assets. It has also published details of the review it will hold into IP growth.

• It said that it wanted to focus particularly on the use of IP by small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) and what it could do to help them to derive greater benefit from creative or inventive work.

• The Intellectual Property Office, part of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), has published the call for evidence to support its review into IP growth.

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