● 06.16.11

● Links 16/6/2011:Dell Linux, Chromebook Reviews

Posted in News Roundup at 8:05 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Software updates are one of the main areas of IT, mainly because of continuous security and enhancement updates. Microsoft usually releases a huge number of security updates each month, and even though they get criticised for this, GNU/Linux has a high number of updates as well, particularly Fedora which is treated as beta or cutting edge versions of free and open source software.

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• Also, the RPM system can provide a complete list of packages installed with the command “rpm -qa”. And, logs of the RPM installation process are always logged to /var/log/messages. Reporting could be set up to pull this data, however to date I have not discovered a central system for producing these types of reports. This is where the Kace/Dell Kbox steps in and uses a running agent on each client to gather data into a central SQL database.

• While Dell seems confused about tablets they seem less confused about notebooks. “Built For Businesses With Linux Operating System”

• Alexander Swen is a true Linux evangelist. Since 1996, when he started using Linux-Mandrake on his home computers, he’s been happily converting friends and family to the OS—even getting his parents on board. “I think everyone should use Linux,” he says. “And I want to help promote it any way I can.”

• But Alexander wasn’t always a Linux man. In fact, even as he built up his Linux empire at home, he continued to work as a Windows admin up until 2004, when he finally realized he had to make a change. “I had become more and more frustrated by the instability,” he says. “And when a surprise update ended up ruining a working system, I decided that I had to move away from my Windows career—and start working as a Linux admin.”

Chrome OS

• Under the hood, a Chromebook is a Linux system, customized by Google that runs the Chrome browser as its interface. That’s your desktop–a browser. It’s efficient and I use Chrome exclusively as my browser anyway. So, it’s a natural fit for someone who uses Linux, the Chrome browser and has a keen interest in the Cloud.

• IHS iSuppli published the results of a teardown of the 3G version of Samsung’s Chrome OS-based Series 5 Chromebook — which began shipping today for $500 — and estimates the solidly-built notebook cost $334.32 to build. Meanwhile, an eWEEK review of the Wi-Fi only Series 5 was similarly impressed with the hardware, but questioned whether Chrome OS would find many takers.

• If you want a Windows laptop, get a Windows laptop. But, if you want an easy-to-use, Web-based laptop, consider getting a Chromebook. So long as you realize that the Samsung Series 5 and its brother from another company, the Acer Chromebook, is not a full-featured Windows or Linux notebook computer you’ll be fine.

• So it is that I’m pretty happy with my brand new Samsung Series 5 3G even though CNET gave it a just “ok” rating pending software improvements. While neither Chromebook will be generally available until June 15th, I was able to get my hands on one a week early. I’ve been working with mine for several days now and this is what I’ve found.

• The first few Chromebooks from Acer and Samsung feature a clean, clutter free design. Solid black, or black with a white top, and no stickers. A refreshing change from “Intel Inside” and “Made for Windows” stickers that accompany most PC laptops. The Chromebooks look good. The Chromebooks are small and light, and claim battery life between six and eight and a half hours of continual use. They come with standard ports and a webcam, but what is most interesting about the machines is what not listed. Google doesn’t draw attention to the tiny, and extremely fast, SSD hard drive, or the the amount of RAM in the machine, an intentional dismissal of their importance. Plainly said, it doesn’t matter, Chromebooks have speed where it matters, and are meant for only one thing.

Server

• With Intel’s top brass bad-mouthing ARM-based servers, upstart server chip maker Calxeda can’t let Intel do all the talking. It has to put together an ecosystem of hardware and software partners who believe there’s a place for a low-power, 32-bit ARM-based server platform in the data center.

• To that end, Calxeda, formerly known as Smooth-Stone, is launching the “trailblazer initiative” – a team of 10 software companies that will support upcoming servers based on Calxeda’s impending ARM-based system-on-chip (SoC) designs

• The Calxeda ARM super friends include Autonomic Resources, Canonical, Caringo, Couchbase, Datastax, Eucalyptus Systems, Gluster, Momentum SI, Opscode, and Pervasive.

• Canonical is of course, the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu distribution of Linux, which is now first in line as the server operating system of choice for Calxeda ARM-based servers.

• Officials with Calxeda, the startup that’s building ARM-based chips for low-power data center servers, announced a “Trailblazer” program designed to create an ecosystem around its technology. But, while Calxeda touted support from Ubuntu Linux sponsor Canonical, among other companies, there’s been no hint from Microsoft that it will create a server edition of its ARM-based “Windows 8.”

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

• We’re proud to announce the second version of the Native Linux KVM tool! We’re now officially aiming for merging to mainline in 3.1.

• Has it really been twenty years? Yes, yes, it has been twenty years since Linus Torvalds announced that he was working on “a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.” Twenty years of Linux later, The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating Linux’s growth, has announced the program for this year’s LinuxCon North America taking place in Vancouver, B.C. August 17-19, 2011.

• The Linux Foundation has announced its program and schedule for this year’s LinuxCon North America event taking place in Vancouver, B.C. August 17-19, 2011.

• LinuxCon is the world’s leading conference addressing all matters Linux for the global business and technical communities. LinuxCon includes in-depth technical content for developers and operations personnel, as well as business and legal insight from the industry’s leaders.

• What do we have in it? More than in -rc2. I’m clearly not the only one who was in Japan for LinuxCon, or something else just made people wake up.

Graphics Stack

• The Catalyst 11.6 for Linux build isn’t particularly exciting. Release notes for the 11.6 driver haven’t been made publicly available yet, but if they do emerge, they’ll basically say there’s installer/uninstaller improvements, support for reading the highest available memory clock from AMDCCCLE, and some other minor changes / bug-fixes. That’s about it.

Applications

• The Boxee development team has announced that it will be bringing the open source version of the Boxee media centre back in line with the version of the software that it has been developing for the Boxee Box by D-Link. For the past eight months, the “downloadable” version of the software – which can run on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and Apple TV – has languished at version 0.92 with no updates, while the developers concentrated on the Boxee Box development where the firmware version has seen new features added and bugs fixed.

• In May, the company delivered version 1.1 of the firmware version of Boxee, and now, in a post on the Boxee blog, CEO & Co-founder Avner Ronen says that the team hope to have new builds of the open source software available “this fall”. These new builds will include the features that current Boxee Box owners already have, including an updated browser, improved audio and video playback and support for even more content providers.

• I didn’t include here applications like GIMP or Krita since they are full-fledged image manipulation applications, not just simple painting programs, nor Scribus or Inkscape since they serve different purposes. This article overviews 7 8 simple drawing applications for both KDE and GNOME.

• Oftentimes reminder applications live as add-on apps to much more complex software programs. Email-Reminder is a standalone app that does one thing and does it well. Its way of reminding you of your tasks is by sending you an email at the appointed time. That’s rendered even more effective if you happen to carry email access at all times via a smartphone.

• Apache Traffic Server, the high performance caching HTTP/1.1 proxy server, has been updated to version 3.0.0 and is now a 64 bit application. In benchmarks, Apache Traffic Server 3.0.0 has been able to handle 200,000 requests per second, which the developers say is a 277% improvement over version 2.0.

Proprietary

• The worst part? Adobe doesn’t even have the gall to respond to their users about the lack of updates.

• Flash isn’t the only thing Adobe plans to screw it’s desktop Linux users on though. As of version 2.7 Adobe’s Air technology will no longer support desktop Linux. At least the developers at Adobe labs have the spine to tell us the are dropping support for the Linux desktop with Air instead of just leaving us wondering.

• Given the recent popularity of standards-driven HTML5 applications on a variety of platforms, including Windows, iOS, and Linux distributions, it seems pretty silly for Adobe, makers of Flash, to tick off even one set of platform users.

• Yet, as Caitlyn Martin pointed out last week, that’s exactly what they may have done. It seems that Abobe’s Flash Player is still not available for 64-bit Linux users, despite promises in 2010 to serve this particular platform.

• To Adobe’s credit, Martin’s initial column did illicit a promise from Adobe that they would indeed be getting out a 64-bit Linux product “later this year.” But, really, are we still living in an age where platforms like this have to cajole proprietary vendors to get with the program?

• Apparently so. In terms of 64-bit Linux specifically, it used to be a small minority of a small-to-begin-with platform base. But now, as users buy new machines, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to get 32-bit machines. Most new users of any OS want that 64-bit functionality they paid for.

• Danger’s fate casts a long shadow today as Microsoft prepares to consummate its $8 billion purchase of the new hotness, Skype, a Luxembourg-based Internet phone service. Although Danger and Skype are decidedly different companies, there are parallels. Both are hyper focused on consumers, and both have a strong startup culture. The similarities make Microsoft’s experience with Danger all the more relevant to its pending assimilation of Skype.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• OpenClonk is free and open source successor of German shareware game series Clonk. Clonk, which dates back to 1994 with its first game on MS DOS has quite a dedicated fan following and an extremely popular game modding/extension system.

• Maybe I’m discovering boiled water here, but today I stumbled upon a little game. I downloaded it because it was very small, so even if it was bad, I wouldn’t have wasted too much time and space with the download. Its name is Gravitation, and it was released in 2008 (wow! that says how much into gaming I am these days!

DEs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• PeaZip is an open source file and archive manager: cross platform, available as portable and installable software for Windows (9x, 2k, XP, Vista) and Linux x86 and x86-64. PeaZip is a desktop neutral application.

GNOME Desktop

• Here are some more extensions designed to provide a classic style GNOME desktop for GNOME Shell (for the previous GNOME2-like desktop extensions, see this post). The first two extensions are called Reflection and Window List and are created for a Linux distribution called Guadalinex:

Distributions

New Releases

• After more than 5 months of daily development following the release of 4.2 AV Linux 5.0 is here. This release balances the rock-solid reliability of Debian’s stable ‘Squeeze’ release and fortifies it with some carefully selected Sid and Custom packages to make it a state-of-the-art Multimedia Content Creation Powerhouse. This release will usher in a less frequent annual release cycle and shift the focus from Linux Audio/Video software testing to reliable Linux Audio/Video PRODUCTION. If you are someone who’d rather create content than experiment with alpha/beta software then this release is for you.

• It’s that time of the month again. The most noticeable change is Rox now handles the desktop icons and feh displays the desktop wallpaper. These seemed like the best light weight choices in preparation for the new PCManFM when it’s released as stable. Parted was upgraded to 3.0, but GParted is still linked against LibParted 2.4 for now. All fonts should look good in Firefox if you use a language other than US English. A few other useful programs were added like ZFS Fuse, Lilo Setup, Rox Filer, and FixParts.

• The theme for v3.7 is improved integrity and interoperability. Tiny Core remains true to size. Currently at 10.3MB! Yet now adds NTFS read support. And seamless NTFS read-write support via extension or installation options. Improved integrity is achieved by better warning messages to prevent misuse of unsupported file systems. Also new are Starter Packs. As installation is typically a one time event. Therefore the GUI installation program and all necessary support extensions are now conviently packaged into a starter pack, install.gz. Same is offered with grub4dos.gz. This has the option to install inside an existing NTFS partition. Our network.gz starter pack, provides all the tools typically needed to get connected, including a tiny wifi manager. And, finally, combining multiple boot images together with starter packs, we offer multicore.iso. This bootable CD image, provides the easiest way yet to install, get connected, and get online.

Red Hat Family

• By most accounts, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss middleware are both solid successes. But can two newer initiatives — namely, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and OpenShift — also gain critical mass, particularly among cloud computing partners? Here are The VAR Guy’s early educated guesses.

• For those who are late to the Red Hat story, the company is on track to become the first $1 billion open source specialist within the next year or so. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has successfully pushed beyond traditional servers and is gaining momentum on cloud-centric servers, while JBoss middleware has caught on with sophisticated IT consultants.

• Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) are trading very close to calculated support at $41.30 with current price action closing at just $42.26 places the stock price near levels where traders will start paying attention.

Fedora

• Dear Fedora fans, we are sorry to announced today that the Fedora 13 (Goddard) Linux distribution will reach end of life (EOL) next Friday, on June 24th, 2011.

• Dubbed Goddard, the Fedora 13 operating system was released on May 25th, 2010. It was powered by Linux kernel 2.6.32 and it introduced features such as enhanced init system, topology awareness, color management, SystemTap static probes, Mozilla Firefox 3.6, Nvidia 3D support, and KDE SC 4.4.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• At the Ubuntu Developer Summit, last month in Hungary, I was leading a session on application containing and gathered ideas on how to improve the safety of our user’s desktop while still making it easy for app developers.

• News on Ubuntu is getting better by the day. The first half of May saw Canonical joining GENIVI Alliance, the reference platform for In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) for opensource products. Canonical will also introduce a new GENIVI compliant Ubuntu IVI Remix.

Flavours and Variants

• Other options include Pinguy OS 11.04 and Linux Mint 11 “Katya” GNOME, which I know work well with Hulu and AV by AIM but which won’t be supported for as long.

Devices/Embedded

• Imagination Technologies announced it is licensing a new version of its Meta core IP for Linux- and Android-based mobile devices. The Metaflow family of processors combines the Linux-ready Meta Series2 processor IP with the company’s Ensigma UCCP IP for Wi-Fi, mobile TV, and analog and digital TV and radio, says the company.

• Known primarily for its Powervr graphics processor intellectual property (IP), Imagination Technologies has been steadily advancing its long-time, Linux-ready, programmable RISC Meta core IP. In November 2009, the U.K.-based firm announced it had begun licensing a Meta Series2 core IP, adding digital signal processor (DSP) functions, support for hardware multi-threaded execution, and hard real-time capabilities.

• TiVo Inc. announced a new version of its Linux-based DVR/IP set-top box (STB) called the TiVo Premiere Q — said to enable recording four streams at once while simultaneously transmitting three HD streams to other devices via a LAN. The company also announced its first non-DVR STB, the TiVo Preview, which can be used as a thin client multi-room extension for other TiVo devices.

• Kontron announced a machine-to-machine (M2M) development kit that ships with Wind River Linux 4.1. The Kontron M2M Smart Services Developer Kit incorporates Kontron’s nanoETXexpress-TT computer-on-module — which includes a 1GHz Intel Atom E640T — and offers not only gigabit Ethernet but also wireless interfaces including Wi-Fi, ZigBee, and optional 3G/4G cellular.

• Sonos is well known for its broad family of high-quality devices capable of playing audio streamed from a variety of Internet and local sources wirelessly — and synchronously — throughout the home. Sonos’s Linux-powered “ZonePlayers” represent the core of its wireless home audio entertainment architecture, as illustrated in the drawing below.

Phones

Android

• androidquestions.org [is launched by LinuxQuestions people]

• Wireless carrier T-Mobile has entered the group buying market with its own daily deal offering. Called “More for Me,” the nationwide service aggregates deals from such originators as Living Social and Groupon.

• The service is available to anyone who owns an Android handset, T-Mobile spokesperson Anna Friedges told the E-Commerce Times — not just T-Mobile subscribers.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• Huawei tipped a “MediaPad” tablet running Android 3.x, said to be due June 20 and to be the company’s smallest and lightest offering. Meanwhile, rival Chinese manufacturer Lenovo will release both consumer and enterprise 10-inch Android tablets, under the IdeaPad and ThinkPad brands respectively, says an industry report.

• Samsung and American Airlines announced they will deploy 6,000 Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets for premium class, in-flight entertainment on select flights later this year. The roll-out is designed to help promote Samsung’s Android 3.1 tablet in the enterprise market, according to the company.

Free Software/Open Source

• Riverbed is known in the market as a leading vendor of WAN optimization hardware solutions. Riverbed is also a leading sponsor of one of the most popular open source network applications, the Wireshark packet and network analyzer.

• Riverbed’s involvement with Wireshark comes by way of its acquisition of CACE, a technology vendor whose executive team includes the founder of Wireshark, Gerald Combs. Riverbed’s open source networking credibility however goes back even further than the CACE acquisition. Steve McCanne, the CTO of Riverbed is the co-creator of the tcpdump command line packet analyzer.

• The ability to support the myriad of mobile devices in a coherent way is a bugbear for mobilising enterprise applications, but one local start up has leveraged open source components to make it all happen without the need for an on-premise server or native app.

• Blink Mobile Interactive, based in Kariong on the NSW Central Coast (north of Sydney), has developed a Cloud service that integrates enterprise applications and presents them in the best form-factor for the user’s device – be it an iOS, Android, Symbian or Windows-based handset.

Web Browsers

Chrome

• On the eve of the Chromebooks being released to the public, Google has rolled out the next version of its Chrome Web browser: Chrome 12.

• “Wait,” you say, “Didn’t Google just release a new edition of Chrome last month?” Yes, yes they did: Chrome 11 and now they’re back with another one. If you’re a cynic like me, your first thought might have been: “Is there anything new here besides the number? Is there really anything here that demands it be called a major new release?” The answer to those questions is: Yes. Yes, there are sufficient new features in this model for it to be worth given a new number.

Mozilla

• As part of Mozilla’s new rapid release development process the beta development channel has been updated with a Firefox release candidate. For detailed information about the changes please visit:

• * Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/5.0beta/releasenotes/ * Firefox mobile: http://www.mozilla.com/mobile/5.0beta/releasenotes/

• Mozilla is–and deservedly so–widely recognized for defending open web policies and standards, and now, in conjunction with The Barbarian Group, the company is calling for users everywhere to make their “marks” on the open web concept. Mozilla Mark Up is an online project that asks users everywhere to sign their names and contribute their “marks” to an interactive, graphical collection of yes votes in favor of the open web. It’s a small but nicely executed gesture backing important concepts.

Databases

• In Part One of Scale Fail, I discussed some of the major issues which prevent web sites and applications from scaling. As was said there, most scalability issues are really management issues. The first article covered a few of the chronic bad decisions — or “anti-patterns” — which companies suffer from, including compulsive trendiness, lack of metrics, “barn door troubleshooting”, and single-process programming. In Part Two, we’ll explore some more general failures of technology management which lead to downtime.

• After six months in a public beta, Xeround is declaring its MySQL in the cloud database generally available.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• The Document Foundation today announced new advisory board members saying it’s a demonstration of wide corporate support. Florian Effenberger said, “its composition shows that LibreOffice is a vendor-neutral, truly-free office suite, and confirms that The Document Foundation has created a solid base to build upon, for the community, for corporations and enterprises, and for adopters and end-users.”

• Members include ” Google, SUSE, Red Hat, Freies Office Deutschland e.V., Software in the Public Interest, and the Free Software Foundation.” Representatives from each will serve for one year providing advice and guidance on future

• The much-criticized JCP (Java Community Process), which maps out procedures for amending officially sanctioned Java technologies, is set for a face-lift that includes greater transparency and the possible loss of voting privileges for JCP members who disregard their responsibilities.

• New procedures are part of the recently introduced Java Specification Request 348. “This JCR — nicknamed JCP.next — proposes a variety of changes to do with transparency, participation, agility, and governance,” JCP said in a document posted on its website on June 8. The document states that JCP chairman Patrick Curran views full transparency of a JCP expert group operations as the most important change introduced by JSR 348. “Many expert groups carry out their business openly over public mailing lists and publicly viewable issue-trackers, and they make public responses to all comments. JCP.next will elevate those recommended practices to mandatory status. The process of recruiting Expert Group members will also be documented for the public eye, ensuring that all applications are considered in a fair way,” JCP said.

• Computer maker Hewlett-Packard (HP) has settled a lawsuit brought against former boss Mark Hurd as it tried to stop him joining rival Oracle.

• Under the deal, Mr Hurd will give up about $30m (£19.3m) in HP shares he was given in his severance package.

• If Executive Committee members of the Java Community Process don’t like how Oracle is handling Java and the JCP, then why don’t they just vote no when big Java issues come up? Business reasons are key, but a recent olive branch from Oracle may have helped turn the tide in Oracle’s favor.

• First, let’s look at 13-1 vote that approved the release of Java SE 7 this week and see how each member of the 16-member committee voted.

CMS

• The WordPress team has announced the availability of the first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 3.2.

• Web, social, search, mobile, and CMS in a single composite platform

• Open source CMS company Jahia has unveiled the commercial release of its Jahia 6.5 CMS. The company is hoping to differentiate the new product on the basis of its ability to bridge web, portal, social, search, mobile user experience, and content management with a single composite platform.

Project Releases

• Come and get ‘em! GlusterFS 3.2.1 has just been released – it’s a maintenance release with performance enhancements and bug fixes. Packages are available for RHEL, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, CentOS and source tarball.

• After more than two years of development to Horde open source project has released version 4.0 of its integrated groupware and webmail suites.

• Back in April the project announced version 4 of the groupware components, but a further two months of development was done to prepare the integrated groupware suite, which also includes a Webmail Edition.

• The first public version of the Wakanda open source platform for developing web applications using just JavaScript has now been made available to software developers by global software group 4D.

• If you want to make a website go faster, you’ve got a number of options. One of the best and easiest is to place a proxy caching server in front of a website, that accelerates content delivery.

• The open source Varnish Cache is one such technology and is deployed on big name websites, including Facebook and Twitter. Varnish Cache 3.0 was officially released today, expanding the technology with the promise of new modularity for the next generation of web acceleration needs.

Public Services/Government

• Mark Taylor, CEO at Sirius, accused Computacenter of skewing an open source proof-of-concept pilot to favour Microsoft, with which the systems integrator (SI) has a commercial relationship.

• “My opinion is that the large systems integrators would not survive a transition to open source in the public sector, for the simple reason that the savings would be enormous,” Mark Taylor told Computer Weekly. “The loss to their revenue would be massive. Their survival depends on there being no successful open source trials.”

• A Computacenter spokesman said Taylor’s statement was “factually incorrect and potentially libellous”. Matt Kenny, client director at Computacenter, said: “If it’s right for the council then we’ll use open source software, if it’s not then we won’t.”

• Computacenter later claimed the pilot had not been concluded. “Our commitment to Bristol City Council includes maximising the use of open source if it meets their defined business requirements.”.

Licensing

• When you release code under the GNU General Public License (GPL), you undertake a specific set of obligations. Many of these obligations, such as providing a copyright notice and a copy of the GPL version you are using, are relatively simple. However, the obligation to provide source code with the object code is more complex, because you have several choices about how to fulfill it – and the choice you make can cause ongoing problems, especially if you are not set up to administer it.

Programming

• Python logo As expected, Python 2.7.2 and Python 3.1.4 have been released by the Python developers. Both releases contain the security fixes to stop redirection errors that were included in May’s Python 2.5.6 and last week’s Python 2.6.7 “security fixes only” releases, but these are general maintenance releases and therefore contain many more fixes and corrections – although only Python 2.7.2 is a current production version.

• Recently, we covered some of the extensive results from the Eclipse Community Survey and Open Source Developer Report, which contains lots of data about open source trends. In this year’s survey, as has been seen in similar surveys recently, mobile applications and cloud computing are clearly on users’ and developers’ minds. Another set of results from this year’s survey is generating discussion online, though, and raising questions about whether the many new organizations and businesses adopting open source software are also giving back to the projects they benefit from. In many cases, it appears that they are not giving back.

Leftovers

• Google has made changes to its search engine as it strives to get consumers the information they want faster.

• Its new Instant Pages system will shave between two to five seconds off the time it takes for a web page to load, the company said.

• It is also planning to offer voice-activated and enhanced image searching.

• Google, which processes one billion requests every day, said search remained its core focus.

Health/Nutrition

• Ever wonder what happens to the premiums you pay for your health insurance?

• You might be surprised to learn that more and more of the dollars you pay for coverage are being sucked into a kind of black hole.

• It doesn’t really disappear, of course. It just doesn’t do you a bit of good — unless, of course, you believe it is to your advantage that it ultimately winds up in the bank accounts of a few investors and insurance company executives, including those who have to power to deny coverage for potentially life-saving care.

• If you’ve been paying attention to what health insurance company CEOs have been saying to Wall Street over the past several months, you will know that they are spending more and more of their firms’ cash — which comes from you, of course — to “repurchase” their firms’ stock. And Wall Street absolutely loves that.

• The transfer of Medicaid policymaking authority in the committee’s budget bill raises serious constitutional concerns, just as the similar provisions in the budget repair did. By giving so much authority to an unelected official, both versions of this unprecedented transfer of lawmaking authority limit the ability of Wisconsin citizens to have a role in the process. However, in contrast to Act 10, the new bill goes much further in eliminating public involvement since it allows the sweeping grant of authority to be exercised by the DHS Secretary without so much as a single public hearing.

Cablegate

• WikiLeaks has released a statement marking six months since Julian Assange was put under house arrest, setting out his defence against sexual assault claims.

• “The last thing Haiti needs now is an earthquake,” said a May 25, 2005, cable, written two weeks after a 4.3 magnitude tremor shook Port-au-Prince. No injuries were reported, and damage was minor. But the cable warned that “a more severe earthquake would be catastrophic, as the government of Haiti is unprepared to handle a natural disaster of any magnitude,” adding that such an event would compound problems of political instability, poverty and environmental degradation.

• In December 2010 Sweden issued two international warrants for Julian Assange’s arrest. He has been detained without charge since. This is a guide to the events, investigations and court proceedings that are connected with his extradition.

• This guide is the first to map out the legal aspects of the UK extradition cases, the controversies surrounding the Swedish investigation, and societal and political reactions in Sweden.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• The June 8 – June 10 episodes of MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan Show featured a three-part series titled “Firewater?” It pondered whether drilling for methane gas is a path toward a prosperous “clean energy” future for the United States, or if, to the contrary, the harms of methane gas drilling, caused by a process called fracking, nullify these oft-repeated industry claims.

• While three recent scientific reports — one by Duke University, one by Cornell University, and one by the Post Carbon Institute — point to the latter, Ratigan’s series portrayed the issue as still up for debate, with both sides’ claims having equal merit.

• Back in 2005 it was clear to a number of observers that China’s trailing rate of coal consumption was so strong, that its demand was on course to double by the end of the decade. As of 2010, this is precisely what’s happened. From a jump between 2002-2003, around 850 Mtoe (million tonnes oil equivalent), China is now consuming 1713.5 Mtoe as of last year, according to the BP Statistical Review. | see: China Coal Consumption in Mtoe 2000-2010.

• The above chart shows the latest proportions of primary energy sources, as reported by the BP Statistical Review. You can see that Renewables now appear in the data, and account for 1.32% of total world supply of energy.

• There are two big stories in the 2010 data from BP Statistical Review. The first I have already addressed: the colossal growth in coal consumption–predictably in non-OECD–but also the surprising strength in OECD coal demand.

• CRUDE-OIL prices shot up on June 8th—Brent crude to a one-month high of $118.59 per barrel—after OPEC representatives meeting in Vienna were unable to reach an agreement on production quotas. Many had expected an increase in quotas as members with spare production capacity, led by Saudi Arabia, pushed to avoid a price spike that may dampen long-term demand. As figures released in BP’s “Statistical Review of World Energy” show, global oil production has struggled to keep up with increased demand recently, particularly from Asia. In China alone consumption has risen by over 4m barrels per day in the past decade, accounting for two-fifths of the global rise. In 2010 consumption exceeded production by over 5m barrels per day for the first year ever, as world oil stocks were run down.

Finance

• June 13 (Bloomberg) — William Cohan, author of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World” and a Bloomberg Television contributing editor, talks about Goldman Sachs’s position on mortgage securities before the market’s collapse. Cohan speaks with Erik Schatzker and Deirdre Bolton on Bloomberg Television’s “InsideTrack.” (William D. Cohan is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. Source: Bloomberg)

• You didn’t really think Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) would go down without a fight now did you? Of course not. So it should come as little surprise that recently Goldman has started to push back hard against its nemesis, Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, and his narrative that the firm is the lead villain of the financial crisis.

• In its new mission, Goldman has been very careful not to take on Levin directly — after all he remains a very powerful figure in Congress and incurring his further wrath would be plain silly. Instead, the firm has taken its case to the court of public opinion, through a series of orchestrated presentations with members of the mainstream business press and to at least one Wall Street research analyst.

• How many bankers, mortgage brokers, and the rest of the well-renumerated hooligans who brought the economy to its knees have been investigated or prosecuted for what appears to be some highly questionable activities? Very few.

• Kathleen Gallagher of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote a good article on the subject earlier this week. As she reported, James Buchen, vice president of government relations for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, called the amendment “the icing on the cake for us be able to go out and sell Wisconsin as manufacturing heaven.”

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Among them: first-ever head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the Bush Administration from 2003-2005, former Governor of Pennsylvania from 1995-2001, and former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from from 1983-1995.

• Upon leaving the DHS in 2005, Ridge started his career as a lobbyist, opening a lobby shop known as Ridge Global, located in Washington, D.C, which he still currently heads. Beyond this stint, though, Ridge is also a paid “consultant” (a.k.a. lobbyist) for the Marcellus Shale Coaltion, a “trade association” in disguise that in reality is a methane gas industry-funded lobbying group.

• During the Wisconsin protests against Walker’s collective bargaining bill, Walker received an email from a Republican activist and Indiana prosecutor urging him to employ a “false flag operation” — to pretend that he was injured or attacked by a “union thug” — to discredit the unions. The prosecutor lost his job for recommending such a partisan stunt, but the Wisconsin GOP has apparently not learned its lesson.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• Spotify could finally be closing in on a U.S. launch, with three of the major record labels having signed up to provide the service with content, and the fourth and last rumored to be close to doing so. And about time too.

• I’ve been writing about Spotify wanting to launch in the U.S. for over two years now. Only six months after I, resident in the U.K., was able to start using the service. Spotify and its CEO Daniel Ek’s stance has been that it’s definitely coming, just when the time is right. And the time hasn’t been right so far. Mainly because the major record labels in the U.S. haven’t been willing to soften their stance on licensing agreements. Until now, possibly.

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