● 09.09.11

● Links 9/9/2011: NASA and Linux, Samsung Not Buying MeeGo

Posted in News Roundup at 7:20 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• I recently set out to get a new tablet/netbook combo. After reading many reviews about different models I settled on a Dell Inspiron Duo. One thing you will find most all of the Inspiron reviews have in common is that they mention the touch software layer running on Windows 7 is slow. If I said this surprised me it would be a lie. With this in mind I set out to get the Enlightenment desktop running on this device in a cool way. Below is a video of the Enlightenment desktop via Bodhi Linux 1.2.0 running on my Dell Duo:

Kernel Space

Applications

• Being a developer, one of the tool that I use on a day-to-day basis is a text editor (or you can call it IDE). I used to love Dreamweaver, but I find that it is too heavy and doesn’t work well on Linux. Then I switched to Aptana (it was very resource intensive as well), followed by gEdit, and lastly Geany. In my opinion, Geany is one of the best lightweight text editor (for Linux) out there. Then Scribes comes along.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

Desktop Environments

GNOME Desktop

• I know many of you cringe at the mere mention of GNOME Shell or Unity. I don’t have any reservations like that. As a matter of fact, I really like Unity a lot. But what about GNOME foundation’s official GNOME Shell? I have never really used it except for once when I reviewed an early release of GNOME Shell in Fedora 15. But not with Ubuntu yet, not until now.

Distributions

• Everyone has their favorite distro. I try to remain neutral, but in Linux it’s hard to hide your true feelings sometimes. Of course, all rivalries are supposed to be in good humor. Needless to say, I’ve tried a lot of distros. Some I’ve used a lot longer. I’ve found there are a few basic characteristics that make some distros better than others.

New Releases

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• We’re in the off-season for big distro releases, but that hasn’t stopped Mandriva from releasing one of its most interesting variants to date. In a bold move to an exclusive KDE desktop, Mandriva 2011 looks to simplify its development and give people a straight-forward and highly polished offering. Let’s check it out.

Debian Family

• Enrico: Hi, I’m Enrico Zini, a DD from Italy. I’m 35 and I work as a freelance Free Software developer. One of my historical roles in Debian is taking care of Debtags, but that is not all I do: my paid work led me to write and maintain some weather forecast related software in Debian, and recently I gained a Front Desk hat, and then a DAM hat.

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Android

• JACK OF ALL TRADES Google is set to release the next version of its Android mobile operating system in October or November, according to executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

Free Software/Open Source

Web Browsers

Mozilla

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• In our article from September 2nd on the Oracle/Google copyright issues, we included a number of declarations, including that of Prof. Owen Astrachan of Duke University. There were two exhibits identified in the Astrachan declaration, but neither of the exhibits were available at that time. Now Exhibit 3, Astrachan’s Rebuttal Expert Report 391 [PDF] is available in redacted form, and we have reproduced it below.

• Oracle’s history with Sun’s open source projects is one that did not start out well. The openSolaris project was killed off, Apache has left the executive committee of the Java Community Process and multiple projects have been forked including OpenOffice (with LibreOffice), Hudson (with Jenkins) and MySQL (with MariaDB). Oracle has also launched legal action against Google over Java in Android.

BSD

• FreeBSD 9.0 Beta 2 was officially released yesterday, about one month’s late, but it comes with several new features. One of the new features to FreeBSD 9.0 is a new installer (pc-sysinstall) for this BSD operating system, which the developers have requested that it be put through its paces.

Openness/Sharing

• Unipro: Unipro is a small company with about 60-70 software engineers. The company expertise is focused on the following areas: compilers and low-level optimizations development, virtual machines development, quality testing, parallel and cloud-based computing.

Standards/Consortia

• Google Docs is a popular tool for collaboration and web-based document creation: boasting compatibility with common file types including Microsoft Office and the Open Document Format, a generous helping of free storage space, and easy to use web-based tools, it’s proving a tempting move for those unwilling to shell out for the latest iteration of Microsoft’s offering.

Leftovers

Cablegate

• Notorious ladies’ man and truth-pusher Julian Assange remains on mansion-arrest, stemming from allegations of consensual sex. Reporters are camped outside the Ellingham Hall estate he’s been confined to, hoping to catch a glimpse of what a real journalist looks like.

Finance

• There were many factors that contributed to our recent financial bubble: deregulation, cheap money from the Fed, failure to enforce remaining regulations, crony capitalism, hubris, speculation, leverage, and fraud among other problems. While fraud wasn’t the only issue, it was and is a significant contributor to the credit bubble. Restraining fraud is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a sound financial system. Congressional investigations in recent years have put ample evidence of fraud in the public domain.

• Goldman Sachs isn’t the only bank to rip-off its clients and America. But because it is the best at what it does it is the most profitable bank in the world, for now.

• Regular, old everyday trading is the key to Goldman’s success.What does that mean? I’m not talking about Goldman’s “big short” and how it bet massively against the subprime mortgage market while simultaneously selling huge quantities of designed-to-fail mortgage securities to its own customers.

Privacy

• File sharing lawsuits involving the movie the Hurt Locker have been big news in the United States for months as tens of thousands of lawsuits have been filed. It now appears that the lawsuits are coming to Canada as the Federal Court of Canada has paved the way for the identification of subscribers at Bell Canada, Cogeco, and Videotron who are alleged to have copied the movie. Late last month the court ordered the three ISPs to disclose the names and addresses of subscribers linked to IP addresses alleged to have copied the movie. The ISPs were given two weeks to respond and are entitled to be reimbursed for their expenses. In reaching its decision, the court cited the BMG Canada v. Doe case, the last major Canadian case involving peer-to-peer file sharing lawsuits. That case opened the door to further lawsuits, though it established some privacy safeguards. In this instance, the court cited PIPEDA as evidence that the personal information can be disclosed as well as federal court rules for the legitimacy of the claim and the necessity of acquiring the information for the lawsuit to proceed. There is no indication that the ISPs challenged the order or that there was an opportunity for a public interest intervention as was the case in the earlier CRIA lawsuits.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• Hyper-vigilant Internet Law Prof Michael Geist seems to be the first to have combed through the latest batch of WikiLeaks diplomatic cables, searching for any document containing the words “Canada” and “copyright.”

• Heritage Minister James Moore says he’s hoping for long-languishing amendments to the Copyright Act to pass by Christmas, but the Supreme Court of Canada could wind up forcing more tinkering with the law.

• Canada’s top court said Thursday it will rule on five separate intellectual property cases together as a bundle, and what it decides could directly impact the Act or at least its interpretation.

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