● 01.17.12

● Links 17/1/2012: SOPA Action, Android at the NSA

Posted in News Roundup at 6:40 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• One of the main goals of LQ is to help members get questions about Linux answered. One way we help facilitate this is with the “Zero Reply” functionality, which allows you to easily find threads with no replies.

Desktop

• Windows users have many reasons for wanting to download and check out the Linux operating system, whether it’s to get a more secure environment to use for online banking, for example, or to get a full-blown Windows replacement.

Server

• Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY is expanding its high-performance computing capabilities with a new hybrid computing system from IBM for AIX and Linux applications.

Kernel Space

• Microsoft has released extensive details on their next-generation ReFS file-system to be introduced with Windows Server 8. How though does the file-system compare to Btrfs and the Linux file-systems?

• Unlike Microsoft’s exFAT file-system that’s designed just for flash memory cards and external storage mediums, ReFS is designed to be a real successor to Microsoft’s aging NTFS file-system that’s been widespread since the Windows 2000/XP days. ReFS is short for a Resilient File System and will be introduced as a production-ready file-system with Windows Server 8. The non-server Windows 8 won’t have ReFS support, but per typical Microsoft fashion, will come to the consumer operating system variants at a later date.

• The fun for the Linux 3.3 kernel merge window is not over quite yet; Intel this morning published 50 patches for integration into this next Linux kernel that affect ACPI and power management, primarily around ACPI 5.0 support for the Linux kernel.

Graphics Stack

• It turns out that Intel’s recently-launched Medfield SoC for tablets and smart-phones will support VA-API for video acceleration.

• With the next GNOME 3.4 development release due out on Wednesday, several GNOME3 packages are being checked-in for release. In this latest round of updates, Clutter and Cogl have both been updated again to take better advantage of the Wayland Display Server.

Applications

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• No Gravity (classic) is a space arcade game with 5 game modes and it has very nice graphics, it is inspired by Wing Commander, a famous game of a few years ago that made ​​history for the space shooter.

Desktop Environments

• As recently as a year ago, the Linux desktop was easy to describe. GNOME and KDE dominated, both offered an ecosystem of applications, and neither much different from Windows and OS X in their goals or design. Xfce was a distant third, with other desktop environments trailing even further behind.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

• The Book is written in Docbook 4.5 (XML) and uses XSLT/FO for producing the book. The book started in german, so the most is done in the german part of the book. Today i’ve added all Topics from the german book to the english one. This Plasma Active Documentation is created and driven by open-slx.

GNOME Desktop

• GNOME3 has actually become quite usable, but I was really annoiyed by the inability to disable actions on “critical low battery” (Additionally, there is no way to define what “critical low battery” is and with a big battery I assume this might well mean that you cannot use the machine anymore even though there is half an hour of juice left). Add to that bnc#738782 which leaves my screen unlocked after suspend and I decided it was time to use someting sane — like xfce4-power-manager — instead.

• The other day on the #opensuse-gnome IRC channel there was a debate about the MATE Desktop and openSUSE. While I like GNOME3, I still feel more comfortable with GNOME2 and this “MATE Desktop” is somehow interesting. Mariusz Fik, a Polish contributor for openSUSE is most likely taking the lead on this project, for which I’ve decided to give some help with the packaging.

Distributions

• Most politicians probably don’t use Linux. After all, some of them have barely figured out computers at all. But since the American presidential campaigning season is once again upon us, I’ve been wondering to myself lately: If the candidates did run Linux, which distribution would they choose? At the risk of offending various groups of people, here are my answers, for better or for worse.

• To be clear, and to temper some of the passionately loathsome comments that a post like this might inspire, I’ll preface these thoughts with an assurance that they are not intended as an endorsement of any candidate, party or ideology. Personally, I’d like to resurrect Rousseau’s state of nature, if only I thought it could endure. And there would be no Linux there, since everyone would be running around the forest. But that’s neither here nor there.

• A relative newcomer to the forensic and penetration testing live CD scene, Italian project BackBox is already turning heads as it hits version 2.01. Gareth Halfacree explains why…

• After nearly ten years of development and more than ten versions, the ArtistX 1.2 multimedia studio on a DVD is finally released. It’s an Ubuntu 11.10-based live DVD that turns a common computer into a full multimedia production studio.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• But Ubuntu the brand, and Canonical as a company, is seriously confusing to me. What exactly is it there for, outside of being the backing for the Ubuntu distro? Apparently they provide some sort of “enterprise consulting” and training. Apparently you can also buy support from Canonical as a regular consumer (just found this out on their website) for just over $100 (American). And of course there’s the deal with Dell (and others?) to act as an OEM for a few computer models. So they do have a business, but I don’t see how they have a profitable one.

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Android

• “The Ice Cream Sandwich release brings even greater NFC functionality to the Android operating system, and INSIDE is making our latest version of Open NFC available to give connectivity chip vendors, smartphone and tablet manufacturers and software developers a head start in achieving NFC hardware independence,” said Charles Walton, COO for INSIDE Secure. “Once again, INSIDE is offering the Android community a complete, open-source NFC stack solution that can be used to greatly speed development and time to market, requiring only that the small hardware abstraction layer (HAL) portion be tailored for specific hardware.”

• The Samsung Galaxy Nexus features an impressive screen, a nice camera and the latest and greatest version of Android — Ice Cream Sandwich. Its voice control option is no Siri, but it gets the job done. However, the phone seems to guzzle power, significantly depleting the battery in just a few hours of moderate use.

• Yesterday Koushik Dutta, a member of the Cyanogenmod team, announced that the distribution had reached the one million installs milestone. Cyanogenmod is a community led distribution based on Google’s Android known for supporting many smartphones and tablets.

• According to Cyanogenmod’s statistics, just under 24 per cent of Cyanogenmod users run 7.1. While detractors claim that Android is fragmented between several different vendors, Cyanogenmod’s statistics show that the vast majority of its users run Cyanogenmod 7.0 or above, near the latest bleeding edge of Android.

• Mobile, handheld computers are changing the way people do business. A new report from GIA says that open source operating systems such as Google’s Android are expected to dominate the market going forward, while single-source systems such as Apple’s iOS and RIM are going to lose market share.

• Inside Secure SA, a fabless supplier of near field communications (NFC) chips, has announced a free, open-source NFC protocol stack that it has made available for version 4.0 of the Google Android platform that is otherwise known as Ice Cream Sandwich.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• Softpedia is proud to introduce today a new Linux operating system based on the popular Ubuntu distribution, Ubuntu Secured Remix.

• Ubuntu Secured Remix 11.10 is actually based on the Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system and is a slightly modified version of the Ubuntu Desktop Live CD.

Free Software/Open Source

• The OpenNebula Project is proud to announce the release of a new stable version of its widely deployed open-source management platform for enterprise data center virtualization. OpenNebula 3.2 is the first stable distribution produced by OpenNebula’s new release cycle aimed at faster delivery of new features and innovations to the community, based on their requirements and feedback, while also increasing technical quality.

• So, the year changed again and with it come quite often new decisions. Some swear to work out the superfluous kilos, pounds, or whatever standardized measure your country uses, gained too fast during the festivals. If it is your decision, it is for sure good for your body and I wish you success that goes beyond the act of subscribing to a local gym (and never appearing there after first month).

• But this could be also a nice time to take a decision that you were procrastinating with for too long. That one is good for your intellect and programming skills (even though you don’t consider yourself a programmer yet). What about starting to contribute to a Free and Open Source Software project (FOSS)?

• Big Switch Networks, a new vendor in the nascent, but growing field of OpenFlow-based networking, has introduced an open source controller for companies that want to build applications on top of the controller in an environment where the network intelligence is in the software-based controller rather than in the physical hardware of routers and switches. Big Switch, which also has a commercial controller offering in beta release, said it is offering the open source controller, called Floodlight, to stimulate development on the OpenFlow protocol.

Events

• The Southern California Linux Expo SCALE 10X is putting the final touches on the first-of-the-year Linux expo in North America. Games? SCALE has them, as well as classes at SCALE U and the rapid-fire UpSCALE talks and more.

• A: My name is Alison Chaiken. For years I worked on cool technologies in the area of device physics and BioMEMS, but the projects I worked on always ended in cancellation and opportunities were diminishing. I’ve used Unix and Linux for almost 30 years on my personal systems. When the original Bug and Gumstix came out, suddenly I had the epiphany that by I could convert my hobby into a career with more positive impact on the world.

Business

Semi-Open Source

• Nuxeo, the provider of an open source content management platform for business applications, today announced the opening of its U.S. headquarters in New York City. The company initially expanded into the United States in 2009, and already has offices in Boston and Silicon Valley.

BSD

• One of the oldest open source operating systems is getting a new release. FreeBSD 9.0 was officially released this week, providing users with a boost in performance and capabilities over the FreeBSD 8.0 branch that was released in 2009.

• OPEN SOURCE OPERATING SYSTEM FreeBSD has released FreeBSD 9.0, almost a year after its previous release, updating ZFS to pool version 28.

Project Releases

• ForgeRock, the vendor behind the I3 Open Identity Platform, today announced OpenIDM 2.0, the next generation open source Identity Management (IDM) solution.

Openness/Sharing

• What qualities make a city open source? Is it technology, government policies, or businesses? No. It’s the mindset of the people. It’s the philosophy and the culture.

• About a year ago, I started trying to define an open source city. I’m very interested in seeing my own city (Raleigh, NC) become a hub for open source and a leader in open government. With Red Hat’s announcement to stay headquartered in Raleigh earlier this month, the City of Raleigh appears poised to “establish a growing ecosystem of partners and providers around the open source leader and to bolster Raleigh’s reputation as a leading open source community.”

Open Data

• Someone hiding behind a range of Google IP addresses in India has been up to no good. Allegedly, the person or persons behind the range of Google IPs have been accessing the open-source map project called Open Street Map and using tools there to vandalize maps of major cities. The vandalism has included things that could get some users of the map into danger.

• Late last week, a story broke about how a Google contractor was apparently scraping info from a Kenyan crowd-sourced phone directory, Mocality, and then calling businesses pretending that there was a joint Google-Mocality venture for which businesses had to pay. Google responded that it was “mortified” by these actions, and are investigating them. However, ReadWriteWeb, is now reporting that the very same contractor has now been called out for vandalizing Open Street Maps, the more open alternative to Google Maps that has been getting a lot more attention lately. It appears the vandalism was deliberate, doing things that are hard to spot — like reversing the direction on one-way streets.

• Google has once again been accused of underhand business tactics, this time by OpenStreetMap. The not-for-profit organisation published a light-on-detail blog post alleging that Mountain View was “moving and abusing” the mapping outfit’s data.

• However the very same post appears to have been completely debunked by an OSM sysadmin, who claims to have first uncovered the issue.

Open Hardware

• “We decided to follow an open-source model, because if all of these labs have a common research platform for doing robotic surgery, the whole field will be able to advance more quickly,” said Jacob Rosen, associate professor of computer engineering in the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz and principal investigator on the project.

Programming

• What I was really happy about, however, was the Microchip MPLAB X, which runs nicely under my OS of choice, Linux. I promised that this week I’d show you a little bit about MPLAB X under Linux, and I’m as good as my word.

• The IDE is based on Netbeans (see the Figure) which is, of course, a Java program so it isn’t too surprising that it runs well under Linux. Netbeans is on par with other modern development environments — it interfaces with bug trackers, version control, and additional tools you expect to use while writing software.

Leftovers

• Kevin Drum asks: “Just out of curiosity, did anyone ever really believe that ‘don’t be evil’ stuff?”

• Actually, yes. At a minimum, the people who work there do. When I spent a summer there in 2010, I found the idea of Google holding itself to a higher standard than other companies was widely shared by rank and file Google employees. And it shows up in their behavior.

• Google’s decision to exit the Chinese market over human rights abuses reportedly sparked a fierce debate within Google’s triumvirate, with Sergey Brin pushing hard for pulling out based on his own experiences growing in the Soviet Union. Google does more than any other technology company I know of to bring transparency to takedown and surveillance efforts around the world.

Security

Defence/Police/Aggression

Censorship

• India has long faced an uneasy tension between allowing free expression to its citizens and staunching sectarian violence among its people. It was one of the first countries to ban “The Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie. Lawsuits forced the Indian painter Maqbool Fida Husain to live in exile during the last several years of his life. An academic book about the 17th-century warrior known as Shivaji was banned for fear of offending Shivaji’s modern-day fans, until the Supreme Court lifted the prohibition.

Civil Rights

• One of the more unfortunate consequences of Moore’s Law is that technologies that erode privacy are becoming cheaper every year – and hence more attractive to governments eager to spy on their own populace. The latest to heed the siren call of mass surveillance is Argentina.

Intellectual Monopolies

• The most recent episode of On The Media explored this… and also talked about how most of King’s speeches were actually built off the works of others, but then (obviously) turned into something much more powerful through his detailed study and understanding of how to preach.

Copyrights

• Now on the business side, all of the the vendors in my list above are also all infrastructure type players and all of them have large government contracts of some type, meaning it might be politically expedient for them to be on the sidelines (for the most part). At this point, thanks to regular people signing petitions and standing up against SOPA, it looks likely that this will never pass Congress. But it is still interesting to note where everyone stands.

• A growing number of web sites are planning online protests this month against the SOPA and PIPA legislation being introduced to the US House of Representatives and Senate. Wikipedia is the latest big-name site to join the cause.

• CHIP DESIGNER Nvidia has spoken up to say that it does not support the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) legislation in the US Congress.

• THE FILESHARING Pirate Bay web site will no longer offer downloads of bittorrent files and will instead provide only ‘magnet links’ to users.

• According to Torrent Freak, The Pirate Bay started replacing the current default bittorrent download links with magnet links on Friday. In a month, the internet’s largest bittorrent web site will stop serving bittorrent files indefinitely.

• DISGRACED SOLICITOR and former ACS:Law proprietor Andrew Crossley has been suspended at a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, banned from practising law for two years and ordered to pay £76,326.55 in costs.

• Crossley figured prominently in a scandal that saw his firm and another called Mediacat target internet users with threatening letters accusing them of having committed copyright infringement.

• Among other provisions, the original version of PIPA would give the U.S. government the right to seek court orders demanding that U.S. Internet providers block access to certain websites. Many critics from the tech industry have said the bill would encourage Internet censorship and infringe on users’ freedoms.

• On Saturday, Colorado Senator Mark Udall publicly opposed PIPA. I’ve been talking to Mark and his team for about a month about this and I’m incredibly proud of him for taking a stand on this issue. I’ve been a supporter of Mark’s for many years and his willingness to listen to his constituents, think about and understand the specific issues, speak his mind, and take a leadership role continues to impress me.

• Update: Commenters say that Dick Costolo was taken out of context by The Guardian; that he referred only to the idea of Twitter going dark as silly.

• This is a fair point, and it encapsulates something important: it’s not reasonable to expect everyone to go dark for a day, and it’s not fair to think less of them if they choose not to.

• House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), called Wikipedia’s plan to temporarily shut down on Wednesday to protest his bill a “publicity stunt.”

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