● 07.09.12

● Links 9/7/2012: Linux 3.5 RC 6, Ex-Nokia Staff Resurrects MeeGo

Posted in News Roundup at 5:42 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Some background: I have 10+ years of programming experience on Windows (almost exclusively C/C++, but some .NET as well), I was a user of FreeBSD at home for about 3 years or so (then had to go back to Windows), and I’ve never had much luck with Linux. And now I have to develop software for Linux. I need a plan.

• On Windows, you can get away with just knowing a programming language, an API you’re coding against, your IDE (VisualStudio) and some very basic tools for troubleshooting (Depends, ProcessExplorer, DebugView, WinDbg). Everything else comes naturally.

• On Linux, it’s a very different story. How the hell would I know what DLL (sorry, Shared Object) would load, if I link to it from Firefox plugin? What’s the Linux equivalent of inserting __asm int 3/DebugBreak() in the source and running the program, and then letting the OS call a debugger? Why do release builds use something, called appLoader, while debug builds work somehow different? Worst of all: How to provision Linux development environment?

• Tired of playing tech support for your older, less computer savvy relatives? Then you may want to consider getting them a Linux-powered WOW! Computer.

Desktop

• Dell is tempting Linux developers with the promise of a cut-price XPS 13 Ultrabook running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

• Dell has a skunks works project underway to offer a Linux-based laptop made for developers. Dubbed “Project Sputnik,” the effort has started to gain some traction.

• As part of its development, Dell has launched a beta program called the Sputnik Beta Cosmonaut program. Selected participants will receive the Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook with Ubuntu 12.04LTS pre-loaded at a discounted price.

• Project Sputnik signals Dell’s changing focus to offer open-source technology that it can integrate into its servers, storage and networking offerings and solutions.

Kernel Space

• ARM has today posted their set of patches that implements core Linux kernel support for AArch64, the ARM 64-bit architecture.

• The latest noteworthy patch-set coming out of the Intel Open-Source Technology Center is Mesa support for CMS MSAA for Ivy Bridge hardware.

• As Valve Software’s Linux efforts continue to advance, they uncover Linux bugs. Fortunately, at least one Valve-spotted Linux kernel bug has now been corrected by NVIDIA.

• As mentioned back in March, Valve’s encountered OpenGL Linux performance problems. Those problems haven’t been for the open-source Mesa/Gallium3D drivers that are riddled with issues and incomplete functionality, but with the proprietary AMD and NVIDIA Linux drivers. I haven’t checked recently but I hope those performance issues are now worked out with the latest upstream binary blobs. I would assume those OpenGL performance problems have been worked out with Valve Software showing their Linux client to partners. Aside from Linux OpenGL, Valve is now evidently uncovering non-graphics related problems.

• Linus Torvalds announced yesterday, July 7th, that the sixth Release Candidate of the upcoming Linux 3.5 kernel is now available for download and testing.

• Fixes are being readied to fix the problem in Linux that caused problems when an extra second was added to clocks at the end of June, according to a senior kernel developer.

Graphics Stack

• The latest noteworthy patch-set coming out of the Intel Open-Source Technology Center is Mesa support for CMS MSAA for Ivy Bridge hardware.

• Curaga announced in this forum thread the open-source RadeonTop utility. RadeonTop allows for monitoring of undocumented performance counters on Radeon graphics hardware from the R600 series and newer.

Applications

• The vast majority of computer users depend on a graphical user interface, and fear the command line. However, the command line holds significant power and versatility. Commands issued from a shell offer system administrators a quick and easy way to update, configure and repair a system. The benefits of the command line are not only confined to system administration. The ability to transverse the file system quickly, give more information about files and directories, automate tasks, bring together the power of multiple console tools in a single command line, and run shell scripts are just a few examples of how the command line can offer a potent, multifarious toolbox.

• If you needed an application in KDE to study starts, galaxies and constellations, here is a nice application that may appeal to you. KDE developer Samikshan Bairagya posted some screenshots of the progress he made with KStars. The images below shows a feature he implemented. What’s Interesting is it suggests stars, planetary objects, constellations and deep sky objects to the user.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• At the end of June I mentioned Alien Arena: Reloaded would be released next week. Today in fact that was made a reality with the release of this open-source CRX-engine-powered game.

• Sintel The Game is a video game adaptation of popular open movie Sintel by Blender Foundation. The game showcased its pre-demo in Blender Game Contest 2010 and stood at second place.

• Sintel – The Game takes place within the events of the movie. Sintel finds herself just outside the town of Garway. She bumps into some bandits who attack her and she is taken into the care of a kind stranger. You play as Sintel and follow her on her journey through Garway. On the way you will discover that the guards of Garway are corrupt, and help town folks to rise against them.

Desktop Environments

• I’ve been pushing the Enlightenment desktop for some time now and for as long as I’ve been promoting it I’ve also been warning folks that it is under heavy development. Well folks – Duke Nuke’em Forever might have beat them to a release, but E team is prepping for a major (stable!) release themselves.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Almost all communication between KDE community members happens online, and includes people from all around the world. At Akademy, KDE people meet each other and work together in person. Virtual communication is necessary and valuable for day-to-day work; working face-to-face is much more effective. And Akademy provides much more than that.

• The date for the release of the next milestone in KDE’s 4.x series is quickly approaching. Developers, testers and bug chasers have been busy putting the final touches on the latest version of our software, so it is once again time to get together and celebrate our community’s accomplishment.

• The KDE community is one of the largest and most influential Free Software communities world-wide with thousands of volunteer contributors and countless users. Most of the software written by KDE is based on the Qt toolkit. With the recent strategy changes within Nokia—the largest contributor to Qt, there is uncertainty about the future of Qt that concerns KDE. This is the position of the KDE community regarding the future of Qt…

• If, unfortunately, you did not get selected for GsoC, SoK offers a great opportunity to started and work on an open source project and win yourself a KDE t-shirt and certificate.

• What if there is a tool which makes it easier to manage and organize your participation on SoK? Sayak Banaerjee, a KDE developer, has created an app called “KDE Students Program”, code named Pandora, which does exactly that. The app will be soon available on season.kde.org.

• You have probably heard last week that Peter stepped down as Dolphin maintainer. I would like to thank him for the good collaboration that we had during the last years. It was a great pleasure to work with him, and I think that his departure is a big loss for KDE.

• He entrusted the future maintenance of Dolphin to me, so I will do my best to keep it in good shape. I think that ease of use and stability are what users appreciate most about Dolphin, and I want to make sure that it stays that way.

GNOME Desktop

• As GNOME 3.6 release date comes closer, its development is picking pace. New features are being added and bugs squashed in the process. GNOME always lacked a clock and alarm application, but good news is it will be soon integrated in the next Gnome release. The screemshot below shows how the timer of Gnome will probably look like.

• If you frequently use Gnome for chatting through Empathy, you might have come across a bug which shows the tray background when a banner pops up. Recently, this bug has been fixed by Ana Ris, a developer working on Gnome shell.

• Accessibility is one of the key goals in the Gnome Project. Gnome developers have always sought to make computing accessible to everyone. One of the accessibility tools, the magnifier recently got an update that will make Gnome shell more comfortable for people with low vision.

Distributions

• It’s been a long while since Linux distros have tried to emulate the look and feel of Windows. Most distributions thought it would be the best way to get Windows users who are fed up with the constant virus and malware threats to switch to Linux and it has not been a successful run back in the day with Linspire and Xandros closing up shop a long time ago.

• Doudou is a French Debian based distro for kids 2-12 years old and a quite popular actually. Few days ago they released version 1.2 and I thought to have a quick look at it.

• I’ll be totally honest. Doudou looks very promising and is really useful distro, but.. but it suffers from old school Linux developing attitude. What’s that? It’s handy made.

• Developers just packed lots of software in a poor environment and the only modern thing here is the GCompris platform. They say that target up to 12 years old kids. Oh well, my opinion, do not gift this to a 12 years old kid, he will hate you. You better buy him a barbie

• The Zorin Group has released the latest version of Zorin OS which is optimized for multimedia consumption, creation and editing. The team recently released Zorin OS for Home and Business users.

New Releases

• Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 0.12.1, is out.

• This is a brown paper bag release aimed at fixing two major problems introduced in Tails 0.12. While upgrading is recommended, it’s not strictly necessary for users that haven’t experienced any issues with Tails 0.12.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• Mandriva is in the final stages of launching the community edition of Mandriva Linux. And they are asking for your input – to help choose a name for that community edition.

Red Hat Family

• RHEL 6 was officially released in November of 2010, and with Red Hat Enterprise Linux receiving a major update approximately every two years, RHEL 7 is due to be released sometime in 2013.

• Tim Burke, vice-president of Linux Engineering at Red Hat, noted that key themes for RHEL 7 will include data center operational efficiency, virtualization and cloud enhancements as well as advancements in the integrated developers’ tools.

• Open-source software developer Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) has introduced its JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6, a cloud-based platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering designed to help enterprises and their developers decrease speed application delivery.

• Red Hat’s new platform lets enterprises move application development and deployment to the cloud without the need to diverge from open industry standards, according to the company. It can be deployed in on-premise, private and public clouds to suit the needs of enterprises in various stages of cloud migration.

• 2012 Red Hat Summit: RHEL Roadmap, Intel, Etc This news is a few days tardy, but the videos from the 2012 Red Hat Summit are now available.

• Open source provider Red Hat claims it is gaining traction in the New Zealand market. Red Hat credits this in part to the establishment of a presence here with the opening of an office in Auckland in April, 2011.

• But with last month’s global rollouts of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6, and upgrades to its JBoss Data Grid and Enterprise Business Rules Management System, the company sees itself in a better position to compete for business with middleware ISVs, systems integrators and resellers.

• “Traditionally, organisations have looked to IBM and Oracle for this, and we’ve struggled to gain legitimacy because we lacked a presence and a track record,” says Max McLaren, Red Hat’s MD for Australia and New Zealand.

Debian Family

• DebConf 2012, this year’s Debian event, will begin on Sunday and run through next week.

• DebConf 2012 is being hosted in Managua, Nicaragua at the Universidad Centroamericana.

• Debian project leader, Stefano Zacchiroli, has announced his plans to get Debian added to the list of FSF approved free software distributions.

• Zacchiroli explains the reason Debian is not listed in the FSF approved list, “Historically, one of the main argument to exclude Debian from the free-distro list (argument we have share with essentially all other popular distros) has been non-free firmware in main. This argument has become moot since the early days of Squeeze development (early 2010).”

Derivatives

• Experienced Linux users would know that when a Linux system initializes, it starts a lot of services, some of which are either unnecessary or not needed immediately (printing, for instance). So unless you know how to turn them off, it can be very frustrating to wait for the Linux desktop to fully load and become usable.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• While there’s still more than one month until the Ubuntu 12.10 feature freeze, Canonical/Ubuntu developers continue to work towards their concept of having Wayland serve as a system compositor for this next Ubuntu Linux release due out in October, but will they make it?

• A long-time Windows user and an avid gamer, I never felt the need to install Linux on any of my systems. That was until I required a server box to handle automated build compilation, source control and backups for my programming work. The idea of buying another copy of Windows for a machine I’d never be in front of seemed ludicrous and so a copy of Ubuntu was installed instead. Having used Windows and Linux side-by-side for almost a year has given me an entirely new perspective on both operating systems.

Flavours and Variants

• For those who have been following you will know that I have recently embarked on a three part review of Puppy Linux. For those who haven’t been following, I have recently embarked on a three part review of Puppy Linux.

Devices/Embedded

• PetRockBlog founder Florian has found a cool way to play with his new credit-card-sized Raspberry Pi PC: turn it into a universal gaming console.

Phones

• A group of ex-Nokia staff and MeeGo enthusiasts has formed Jolla (Finnish for “dinghy”), a mobile startup with the aim of bringing new MeeGo devices to the market. According to its LinkedIn page, Jolla consists of “directors and core professionals from Nokia’s MeeGo N9 organization, together with some of the best minds working on MeeGo in the communities.”

• Nokia’s MeeGo software, which was dropped by the company in favor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone, is to live again after a group of former Nokia employees have set up a company to use the Linux-based mobile operating system.

• Just last week, it was announced that Nokia’s MeeGo team—the same team responsible for the revered OS used on the N9—walked away from the company. Although everyone has stayed hush on the matter, it is believed Nokia’s 10,000 job cuts had something to do with it.

• But it’s not that easy walking away from a labour of love. Those unfamiliar with MeeGo should know it’s built upon Linux, a programming language that is free and can be used by anyone with the skillset, ultimately promoting innovation before financial gain. That’s why most of the Nokia team have gone into business for themselves, creating a company called Jolla to continue bringing MeeGo powered devices to the market.

• A six-man group of open-source diehards from Nokia have teamed up to form Jolla Mobile, a company focused on building phones using the Linux-based MeeGo operating system.

Android

• Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is developing a smartphone that would vie with Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone and handheld devices that run Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android operating system, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

• Good news, Android fans. A developer over on the forever awesome XDA Developers forums has figured out how to extract Google Now from Android Jelly Bean and port it over to devices running Ice Cream Sandwich. The process for doing so requires a slightly geeky skill set, of course. You have to have a rooted device and you’ll need to be comfortable navigating through the Android file system, for starters. But assuming that’s you, then you can be among the first to try Google Now in (nearly) all its glory.

• In case you’re wondering what the big fuss is about, Google Now is only the most innovative, futuristic, and even downright creepy updates to Google’s search service ever to come. Instead of presenting a blank box where you type in text and hit enter, Google Now flips the search paradigm on its head. It alerts you to things you’ll want to know about before you search for them. Yes, really. Billed as a smart personal assistant to rival Apple’s Siri, Google Now comes pre-loaded on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean devices (the most recent version of Android, introduced at Google I/O), and proactively alerts you to things like weather changes, flight times and delays, sports scores, interesting places near you where you might like to eat, shop or visit, and more.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• Archos is creating some stiff competition for Amazon’s Kindle Fire. The company has announced its 9-inch tablet for US$250 to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

• If compared with Amazon Kindle Fire, Archos has an edge in almost every department:

• - It allows users to access the Google Play Store which has more than 600,000 apps compared to Amazon’s smaller profile. Amazon blocks access to Google Play Store. - Amazon Kindle Fire has only 8GB internal storage with only 6GB for content. On the contrary Archos Carbon has 16GB of internal memory with SD card support so you can keep all your music, movies and games without worry. - 9-inch (1280×786) display as compared to 7-inch screen of Kindle Fire.

Free Software/Open Source

• What does “open source” mean? With open source software being so prevalent in our lives (Android, WordPress, Mozilla Firefox are almost fixtures), you would think that it would be simple enough to find somebody who can explain the term around here. A quick survey around the office turned out dismal results, however. A fellow intern told me “open source software” simply meant that the source code is open for view; another insisted that it means the software is free to use. I personally had the impression that it meant the code was crowd sourced and created by volunteer developers–the idea was immediately shot down by the other two. So what, really, does “open source” mean?

• Despite being still in the testing stages, Diaspora* is arguably the most well-known distributed social network at the moment. The brainchild of four NYU students, Dan Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy, the project was able to fundraise over $200, 000 in 2010 through Kickstarter (Mark Zuckerberg was a donor). The code is open-source and hosted on Github, where it is worked on by volunteer developers. In Diaspora*, users set up a personalized server, termed “pods”, using the Diaspora* software. This server can then be used to port content from

• Despite some well-known open source projects undertaken by NASA, the space agency lacks a framework for understanding the use and production of open source software at the agency level, say a clutch of computer programmers and technologists.

• In an article published earlier this spring by IT Professional, information technology professionals led by Chris Mattmann, a senior computer scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, say that when they tried to open source a JPL project, they “entered uncharted territory.”

• First there was “open” – open source, open tech, open journalism. And now? Prepare yourself for “radical openness”.

• Sponsored by companies in the local open source community, the awards have been running since 2007. They “work to raise awareness of the free and open source advantage for New Zealand by telling powerful success stories based on real achievements that are already making a difference for our country,” say organisers on the awards website.

• Award categories recognise outstanding use of free open-source software in the public sector, the private sector, education, the arts and social services – including charities and community organisations.

• he Internet world changes quickly. Open source, the practice of promoting free redistribution and access to an end product’s implementation, was little known and often unpopular.

• The use of open source in trading systems is at an interesting stage. Financial markets participants are now starting to look at open technologies for financial markets, particularly those targeted at trading, to supplement the general open source systems they are already using, such as Linux, Apache and MQ systems.

Events

• If you’re looking for a good way to close out the summer on a high note, keep in mind that the LinuxCon and CloudOpen conferences are taking place together in San Diego, Calif., August 29-31. And, The Linux Foundation has finalized the complete programs and keynote confirmations for the events. Here are the details on what looks like a good time if you’re into Linux and the cloud.

• Open Source software continues to grow in terms of acceptance. In fact, it has become the leader in software segments like cloud computing, mobile applications and enterprise mobility. That’s based on a survey sponsored by North Bridge Venture partners and conducted by Black Duck Software and the 451 Group.

• The deadline for submitting paper proposals for Linux.conf.au 2013 in Canberra was originally supposed to be last Friday, but has now been extended by a fortnight. Am I bitter that I set aside time to make sure I submitted my proposal before the deadline? No. (Grinds teeth.)

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Recently, LXer carried a story that highlighted several Firefox extensions that are a “must have” for any browsing experience. While there were a few in that list that I find newly-useful, it was lacking in some basic extensions that make life ever-so-much-easier for computer commandos.

• There is a set of extensions we add to every Reglue computer we place and I have trouble understanding why they didn’t make this list. Here are a few of them that should have made the cut. I’m sure that you are aware of most of them but I put them here to be passed along to your less savvy friends,

• Mozilla will be announcing Monday that they will be basically stripping away their resources towards the advancement of the Thunderbird e-mail client.

• Mozilla is not “stopping” Thunderbird development, it has just decided that: “continued innovation on Thunderbird is not the best use of our resources given our ambitious organizational goals.” And it’s pulling people off the project. But it’s not stopping? Right.

• This, according to a letter shared with “Mozillians” ahead of the official announcement to be revealed on Monday. Recipients were asked not to share the letter, blog or tweet about the news until then, but obviously someone out there didn’t agree with that plan.

• The open source community and human rights organizations have joined forces to find a software developer who has been missing for months following the recent civil unrest in Syria.

• Bassel Khartabil, a 31-year-old computer engineer, was the project leader of Aiki Framework, an open source tool for building web applications. He also contributed to various community-based online projects, including Creative Commons, Fabricatorz, Mozilla Firefox, Open Clip Art Library, Sharism, and Wikipedia.

• Mozilla has decided to freeze the features and concentrate on web/cloud stuff. That annoys some who have grown to depend on Thunderbird, particularly those with many e-mail accounts. Thunderbird makes sense for its ability to concentrate those accounts in one application.

• An email leaked on Friday forced Mozilla to reveal its decision to reduce resources for the Thunderbird email client ahead of a planned announcement next Monday. The early announcement from Mozilla Foundation chair Mitchell Baker explained that the organisation felt that, as an open source, cross-platform email client, Thunderbird was unlikely to be a “source of innovation” and future leadership. Mozilla’s officials say they have concluded that what is important for Thunderbird is ongoing stability and that “continued innovation in Thunderbird is not a priority for Mozilla’s product efforts”.

SaaS

• You may not remember the angst of the early- to mid-2000s, when the open source debate raged hot and heavy. Many times I witnessed IT professionals vociferously denigrate open source in favor of established proprietary vendors. I heard endless arguments about the quality disadvantages of open source, the lack of “professional ability” among open-source developers, the absolute requirement that a large company stand behind a software component used in a corporate system, the dangers of lack of indemnification, and on and on. According to large numbers of IT organization staff, open source was a toy, fine for unimportant hobby systems, but woefully inadequate for “real” corporate IT applications.

• Today’s cloud computing landscape has no clear leading vendor; but rather is a mosaic of services. While the commercial opportunities are enormous, open source clouds are beginning to dominate the private cloud side of the market.

Education

Semi-Open Source

• There’s no shortage of software out there designed to help foster collaboration in businesses large and small, but this past week a key open source contender got a major update that makes it particularly worth considering.

Funding

BSD

• Here’s a look at some of the planned features that are being worked on for the FreeBSD 10 release.

• The FreeBSD 10 features that have already been talked about on Phoronix include:

• - FreeBSD 10.0 will deprecate GCC and switch to the LLVM/Clang compiler by default. GCC will likely remain within FreeBSD ports, but LLVM/Clang is the future for FreeBSD rather than using the GPLv3-licensed GCC. Other BSD distributions are also working towards migrating from GCC to LLVM/Clang.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• It’s almost a cliche in Western culture. For some reason, those swanky-looking leather-bound backgammon sets became either the mark of tasteful distinction or the default Christmas gift when you don’t know what else to get. I see them in households everywhere. Unopened. Unplayed. Checkers still in the little sealed plastic baggies. Unloved. I don’t know, I guess backgammon sets got advertised in the back pages of Playboy during the ’70s or something; it has that kind of aura.

Project Releases

• The Etherpad Foundation has released a new version of their collaborative web based editor, Etherpad Lite. This release features a lot of bug fixes along with support for node 0.8, new hooks and API endpoints, resolution of various security issues, Postgres support and better Microsoft Windows support out of box.

• The version 2.60 comes with all tickets closed, which means all the open bugs and requests have been resolved. Some of the key changes in this release include better support for magnet links, better scraping behavior for various trackers, notifications for seeding and downloading completion on the web client and various other small bug fixes.

• Transmission 2.60, the open source cross-platform BitTorrent client that strives to be as simple as possible, has been released last evening, July 5th.

• Pidgin, a popular cross-platform IM client, has got a new release. This version fixes a major bug that required users to triple click on the buddy list to open the messaging window.

Public Services/Government

• The Department of Veterans Affairs has awarded Ray Group International of Tampa, Fla., a $4.9 million contract to support the open source community that is contributing software code to the VA and Defense Department integrated electronic health record system.

• The central IT department for the French government has granted a €2 million contract to support 350 different open source tools throughout fifteen different ministries. The three to four year contract, which was officially tendered last year, was awarded to consulting companies Alter Way, Capgemini and Java specialist Zenika.

• Forty three out of the 63 provinces and cities have installed and used open source software. It is estimated that 7300 officers have been trained in the plan to build up the labor force to support the open source software application.

• In many localities, open source solutions have been developed and utilized by the local budget. Quang Nam province, for example, has 90 percent of electronic information websites of the local state agencies developed onJoomla open source. Meanwhile, two districts and three departments in the province are using the one-stop-shop software based on Drupal open source.

• Tuyen said that Vietnam encourages organizations and agencies to use open source software because of its outstanding advantages. It is clearly more economical to use open source software than close sourced software which is always very expensive.

Licensing

• One of the principal authors of version 3 of the Gnu General Public License (GPL) has spun off his own version of the license without the participation of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), in a move that could ruffle feathers in the often-cantankerous free software community.

Openness/Sharing

• Open source computer, open source mobile phone, open source toothbrush, open source jeans, open source video codec, open source camera, open source beer and even open source toilet paper: these are just a few things you need if you decide to make every aspect of your life open source for a year. A 28-year-old filmmaker from New Zealand living in Berlin is going to try just that.

Leftovers

• USA has about 10% of the world’s infected machines. China which has about the same number of on-line users has 1/7 as many infected PCs as USA. India which has four times the population of USA has 1/3 as many infected PCs. To keep the problem at home in USA, the world should just stop using that other OS. It’s not needed and not worth the trouble it cause

Finance

• On Tuesday, the Goldman Sachs group lost an appeal against a $20.6 million award won by creditors of Bayou Group, the now bankrupt hedge fund. Goldman’s argument was rejected by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which found Goldman’s assertion without merit in claiming that the arbitrators making the award had disregarded the law. The three-judge panel appeals court observed, “The manifest disregard standard is, by design, exceedingly difficult to satisfy, and Goldman has not satisfied it in this case.”

• The “toxic culture of greed” on Wall Street was highlighted again last week, when Greg Smith went public with his resignation from Goldman Sachs in a scathing oped published in the New York Times. In other recent eyebrow-raisers, LIBOR rates—the benchmark interest rates involved in interest rate swaps—were shown to be manipulated by the banks that would have to pay up; and the objectivity of the ISDA (International Swaps and Derivatives Association) was called into question, when a 50% haircut for creditors was not declared a “default” requiring counterparties to pay on credit default swaps on Greek sovereign debt.

• PMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s appearances in the last two weeks before Congressional committees — many members of which received campaign contributions from the megabank — beg the question: For how long and how many ways are average Americans going to pay the price for big bank hubris, with our own government acting as accomplice?

• On this week’s Moyers & Company, Rolling Stone editor Matt Taibbi and Yves Smith, creator of the finance and economics blog Naked Capitalism, join Bill to discuss the folly and corruption of both banks and government, and how that tag-team leaves deep wounds in our democracy. Taibbi’s latest piece is “The Scam Wall Street Learned from the Mafia.” Smith is the author of ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism.

Privacy

• Imagine a cheap, tiny, hovering aerial drone capable of being launched with the flick of a person’s wrist and able to provide manipulable 360-degree surveillance views.

• It’s real, it’s inspired by maple seeds, and the company behind it, Lockheed Martin, envisions a future in which swarms of the new drones can be deployed at a fraction of the cost and with greater capabilities than drones being used today by the military and other agencies.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Will Internet companies help or hinder government authorities that try to restrict their citizens from using the Web freely? And will their customers, investors or shareholders care enough to do something about it?

• That debate was freshly stirred on Thursday as the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a landmark resolution supporting freedom of expression on the Internet. Even China, which filters online content through a firewall, backed the resolution. It affirmed that “the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, in particular freedom of expression, which is applicable regardless of frontiers and through any media of one’s choice.”

• Several international civil liberties organisations have put their weight behind a Declaration of Internet Freedom. The first signatories included the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Digital Democracy, and Mozilla. Both individuals and organisations can sign the declaration which reads, in full:

• Verizon pressed its argument against the Federal Communications Commission’s new network neutrality rules on Monday; filing a legal brief with the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. The company argued the FCC’s rules not only exceeded the agency’s regulatory authority, but also violated network owners’ constitutional rights. Specifically, Verizon believes that the FCC is threatening its First Amendment right to freedom of speech and its property rights under the Fifth Amendment.

DRM

• iOS and OS X users are experiencing crashes due to corrupted binaries pushed out by Apple’s servers over the Fourth of July holiday, according to Instapaper developer Marco Arment. The problem appears to be linked to Apple’s FairPlay DRM scheme, which is added to apps downloaded via the iOS App Store or Mac App Store. While Apple appears to be working to correct the issue, the problem is ongoing as of Thursday.

• Arment discovered the problem late Tuesday night after pushing an update to his Instapaper app to the App Store. “I was deluged by support e-mail and Twitter messages from customers saying that it crashed immediately on launch, even with a clean install,” Arment wrote on his blog.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.