● 10.01.12

● Links 1/10/2012: September News of Interest

Posted in News Roundup at 7:12 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Their tales are as varied as the ways in which their systems are used, but the common thread among Linux professionals’ career arcs is that they took matters into their own hands and made things happen. Here are their roll-up-your-sleeves stories.

Desktop

• Just a few days ago I wrote about Edubuntu, the Ubuntu-based Linux distribution targeted to the “market” of teachers, students, pupils and everyone in the industry of education.

• You can install this operating system on a Linux Desktop or Laptop, which you bought for your child or yourself.

• I have written about why I believe Linux remains under 10% of the desktop market: the lack of preloaded systems available in stores and the slow uptake of Linux on the enterprise desktop. The enterprise desktop is critical if Linux is to make progress on the consumer desktop without a presence in big box stores. People use what they know and like. If they use and like Linux at work they may well want to use it at home as well.

• “I don’t think Apple killed anything,” said consultant and Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack. “‘Killed’ implies a permanent state, and I don’t think it’s actually permanent — I’m seeing more interest from my non-techie friends, and announcements such as the porting of Steam to Linux give me hope for the future.”

• Despite being an open source system, Linux received less support from users as it is known to be harder to navigate than Windows. It gained popularity only with developers and computer geeks because they had the freedom to tweak the code to suit their preference. But Linux has made great strides over the years. Where Linux was previously limited only to servers and supercomputers, now more users are daring to use the system in their laptops and desktops. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said in the business environment. Why are businesses resisting the change?

• For a long time, the co-founder of the GNOME desktop project, Miguel de Icaza, has not been heard of in the media. A few days back he surfaced, claiming to know why the Linux desktop has made little or no gain among computer users.

Server

• (Phys.org)—Computational Engineers at the University of Southampton have built a supercomputer from 64 Raspberry Pi computers and Lego.

Kernel Space

• The tool collection util-linux has been extended to include resizepart, a utility that is useful when repartitioning. Some X.org graphics drivers now support hybrid graphics. The infrastructure to support UEFI Secure Boot is maturing

• Smaller buffers are designed to help avoid bufferbloat. “TCP Fast Open” promises to speed up HTTP connections. The netfilter infrastructure can now use userspace programs to help with connection tracking.

• “Release early, release often” is a popular mantra in the open source world. Unfortunately, some developers don’t pay enough attention to it – and contribute to the reputation that Linux offers bad support for current hardware.

• According to a blog posting by Sean Michael Kerner, Linus Torvalds has declared his intention to jump the version number of the Linux kernel up to 4.0 when the second version number of the current branch gets close to reaching “the 30s”. At the current kernel development speed, Linux 3.29 would be released in the autumn of 2016.

• Greg Kroah-Hartman announced a couple of days ago, August 25th, the immediate availability for download of the third maintenance release for the stable Linux 3.5 kernel series.

Applications

• Computers have been a popular medium for playing music for decades. Most computers are not silent and may therefore be discounted as an ideal platform for audiophiles. Nevertheless, for the vast majority of music listeners, fan noise is a minor annoyance. The benefits offered by computers cannot be ignored allowing music lovers to enjoy music without needing a standalone music player. The ability to play a wide range of formats, manage large music collections, and access a huge raft of music available over the internet are just a few examples of the benefits offered by audio players.

• Science is the effort of seeking to comprehend how the physical world works. From observation and experimentation, science uses physical evidence of natural phenomena to compile data and analyze the collated information.

• In modern research it is essential for scientists to keep abreast of the latest statistical software. Just like the fast moving world of research, developments in statistical software and methods continue to abound. Making full use of the improvements in computer software helps to advance the pace of research.

• Playing poker under Gnome is a relatively hard situation. There are almost no GTK poker clients, and those who are lack many things. The good news is that we can use the Qt based PokerTH just fine!

• PokerTH has been around for 6 years now making it a mature application that keeps the poker linux fans amuzed. It offers both a local game mode and the ability to play with others over the internet. You can also connect and play with someone else using the IP.

• A configuration management database (CMDB) is a repository of information related to the various components of an information system detailing an organisation’s IT services and the relationships between those components. The purpose of a CMDB is to catalog and track all of the information that an IT department needs to keep.

• Blender is a 3D content creation suite available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License. It is a fast and versatile design tool that excels in modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing and rigging. You can use it to create water, particle and other simulations. It’s also great for non-linear editing, compositing and creating interactive 3D applications.

Proprietary

• A few hours ago, on August 28th, The Linux Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, proudly announced that Inktank, Servergy and Twitter joined the organization.

• Putting Inktank and Servergy aside, some of you already knew that Twitter was about to join The Linux Foundation on Tuesday, thanks to the media coverage from the past week.

Instructionals/Technical

Wine

Games

• Good news for fans of truck simulator games. Euro Truck Simulator 2 will have a native Linux version.

• Euro Truck Simulator 2 is developed by SCS Software. The game is still in development and it will have following features:

• Linux platform has made its first appearance on Steam website. Few days back, Valve added a zombie Tux to Left4Dead 2 website announcing that it well head to Linux soon and now a Linux platform filter has been added to Steam Greenlight.

• Steam Greenlight is a new initiative by Valve where community votes for games submitted by developers. If Valve finds that a game has generated lots of interest, then it gets included in Steam game library.

• Yesterday the public beta of Steam Big Picture Mode was started. With the optimization for using with TV and with a sophisticated control system, Steam and thus the PC platform enters to compete with game consoles. Of course, all games out of the Steam library can be used in the Big Picture Mode and it is still possible to use mouse and keyboard controllers. Have not we been waiting for a PC-console for years? Now it’s here:

• We’ve announced a couple of weeks ago that with the release of the Unity 4.0 game engine more games will be published on Linux, especially on the Ubuntu platform, via Ubuntu Software Center.

• In the last days, more game studios have announced that their “still in development” games will have native support for the Linux platform.

• For those of you who are chomping at the bit, biting your nails and ruthlessly washing your cars over and over again in anxious anticipation of Steam for Linux, we’ve got good news for you.

Desktop Environments

• The Xfce Project has published earlier today, September 9th, the release schedule for the upcoming Xfce 4.12 desktop environment.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Desktop Linux has had four years of upheaval. Since 2008, KDE, GNOME, and Unity have all faced vocal criticism from users, creating an opportunity for other desktops like Xfce, LXDE, Mate and Cinnamon to gain popularity.

• But, in all the discussion, one question has never been discussed: how did KDE, the first desktop environment to suffer a revolt, manage to live through the experience and continue to prosper?

• The question is not just one of historical interest. Because KDE’s revolt was the first in desktop Linux, it is further along than those that GNOME and Unity continue to face. Mostly, criticism of KDE has faded to a matter of personal choice, and the project enjoys almost the same popularity that it did before the revolt.

GNOME Desktop

• I’m more excited about this release than any since 3.0. The list of major updates is impressive: new message tray, updated Activities Overview, lock screen, integrated input sources, accessibility on by default, new Nautilus. Then there are all the small changes: new style modal dialogs, bags of improvements to System Settings, a new Empathy buddy list, SkyDrive support, natural scrolling, new backgrounds, an overhauled Baobab… the list goes on and on.

• The first beta version of the upcoming 4.5 release for the popular personal accounting software has been released a few hours ago and it comes with many additions and improvements!

• HomeBank has been under development for over 14 years now so it is naturally a very mature, internationalized project that uses the GTK 2 toolkit on 6 different operating system platforms.

• Beth Hadley is one of the 29 students that worked for Gnome components on this year’s Google Summer of Code. She did a great job in adding a set of music learning activities that enrich the magnificent GCompris children education and playing software even further.

• Gnome MPlayer is a GTK2/GTK3 interface for one of the most popular media players on Linux. This easy to use interface gives you the ability to configure the powerful MPlayer in whatever way you like and get the desired results as easy as possible.

• Mageia Foundation released the first Alpha version towards to Mageia 3 (March 2013) three days ago, with UsrMove! If I am not wrong Mageia is just the second popular distro (after Fedora) that migrates to UsrMove, and that shows that the people there, chancing the optimal solutions.

• Speaking of popularity, Mageia’s market trend grows rapidly and by taking into consideration that Mageia 3 is a huge improvement from version 2, it won’t be long till Mageia will look Ubuntu in the eyes.

• You may think or imagine that customizing GTK themes requires special knowledge and a lot of time, but with my new tool it just got easier than ever!

• Clement Lefebvre, father of a lot of Linux technologies used in many of today’s distributions, including Linux Mint, has announced earlier today, September 4th, the features of the upcoming Cinnamon 1.6 desktop environment.

Distributions

• Last week saw the release of Qubes, a Linux-based operating system that’s aiming to make a virtue of sandboxed security.

• I will be honest: I had never heard of this distribution until I received an e-mail 2 weeks ago. That was a request to review the Emmabuntus 2 Linux distribution from its developers’ team.

• One of the best things about Linux is that its distributions come in all shapes and sizes. There’s a distro for every taste and skill level.

New Releases

• I am in a very interesting situation. Some time ago, I promised myself to stay away from LXDE-based distributions. At the same time, I wrote about three of them in the last 6 weeks.

• State Institute of Information Technologies and Telecommunications (Informika) and JSC ALT Linux have developed and released a set of distributions Informika 6.0 School that includes:

• * Informika 6.0 School Server * Informika 6.0 School Teacher * Informika 6.0 School Junior * Informika 6.0 School Master

• What I didn’t know until very recently was which Linux distribution Facebook was using. I caught up with Amir Michael, Server system lead at Facebook the other week at LinuxCon and I asked him.

• The Chakra Development Team, through Anke Boersma, proudly announced last evening, September 8th, the immediate availability for download of the Chakra GNU/Linux 2012.09 operating system.

• Chakra GNU/Linux 2012.09 is dubbed Clair, and it is dedicated to the memory of Claire Lotion, a KDE contributor. This release includes the latest KDE 4.9.1 desktop environment, as well as the latest LibreOffice and Calligra office suites.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

• Anne Nicolas has announced earlier today, September 7th, that the first Alpha version of the upcoming Mageia 3 Linux operating system is now available for download and testing.

• Mageia is my favourite operating system. I have never hidden this fact. It became #1 in my personal rating soon after the release of their version 1 in June 2011, and was the sole holder of that place until about November 2011. Although it shares the first place now with Xubuntu, I currently run version 2 and still like it a lot.

Red Hat Family

• Storage Live Migration is one of the major improvements that Red Hat has introduced with the first beta of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) 3.1, which is now available for testing. The feature allows administrators to migrate virtual machine (VM) disk images between storage arrays without having to shut them down first.

• Urs Beyerle announced last evening, August 26th, that the final version of the Scientific Linux 6.3 Live CD/DVD operating system is now available for download on mirrors worldwide.

• Scientific Linux 6.3 is now based on Red Had Enterprise Linux 6.3, powered by Linux kernel 2.6.32, and features XOrg Server 1.7.7, IceWM 1.2.37, GNOME 2.28, Firefox 10.0.6, Thunderbird 10.0.6, LibreOffice 3.4.5.2 and KDE Software Compilation 4.3.4.

Fedora

• Those of us that follow +Fedora on Google Plus got a handy dandy invitation to Fedora 18 Test Day – Power Management. On October 11th, those who have accepted this invitation are invited to use there laptops and report their experiences back to the Fedora team directly in an attempt to socially corral bugs and improve the Fedora experience.

• Fuduntu Linux has been around since November 2010 and was initially a Fedora remix distribution. In November 2011, however, the codebase was forked and is now an independent distribution. Overall, there are over 30,000 users accessing the repositories. While any distribution takes work and a dedicated team, an independent distribution takes even more work than a remix.

Debian Family

• Klaus Knopper announced a few days ago, on August 26th, the immediate availability for download of the KNOPPIX 7.0.4 operating system.

• KNOPPIX 7.0.4 brings lots of new features and updated packages, such as LibreOffice 3.5.4, Chromium 21.0.1180.75, KDE Software Compilation 4.7.4, GNOME 3.4, Wine 1.5.10, VirtualBox 4.1.18, qemu-kvm 1.0, and much more.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Canonical published a few minutes ago, September 12th, the top 10 app downloads for August 2012, from Ubuntu Software Center.

• On the paid apps chart, it looks like last month’s first place Braid game has been dethroned by a new tool, MC-Launcher, a Minecraft mod installator launcher, followed closely by some of the best games from the Humble Indie Bundle V, Bastion and Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

• Slowly but steadily, Ubuntu is catching up with its competitors. The Canonical-made distro is getting better and better with every release. Ubuntu 12.04 “Precise Pangolin” managed to silence some of the Unity critics to a large extent. And though, work still needs to be done to take on the mighty warriors at Redmond, it seems that Shuttleworth’s untiring endeavors have started coming to fruition. Ubuntu 12.10 recently baptized as Quantal Quetzal is already looking promising.

• Ubuntu for Android (UfA) is a special form of the popular Ubuntu operating system which runs on top of Android so the user can run Anrdoid apps and desktop Linux applications at the same time. It blends desktop Linux with Android in the perfect manner so both touch-oriented and mouse-and-keyboard applications can be used perfectly and in their natural environment.

• Ubuntu is innovative, forward thinking and the most likely LINUX distribution to have any hope of taking on Windows, MacOS and ChromeOS on the desktop. Ubuntu also has aspirations of taking on the mobile and tablet market dominated by Apple and Google.

• So many other distributions are derived from UBUNTU including the distribution that is competing for the honour of top dog in the LINUX world, MINT.

Flavours and Variants

• David Tavares, the developer of Pear Linux, has announced yesterday, September 13th, on Twitter, that the first Alpha version of the upcoming Pear Linux 6 operating system is now available for download and testing.

• Before I start I would like to point out that this is not another review of Peppermint Linux 3 because I have already reviewed Peppermint Linux 3 (http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2012/08/peppermint-linux-3-mint-with-no-holes.html).

• Peppermint Linux 3 has introduced the concept of the “Site Specific Browser” (SSB). This enables you to run web applications as if they are normal desktop applications. To turn a web application into a desktop application simply run the ICE program and enter the web address and the name of the web application and choose a suitable icon and application menu to hang the application from.

• With Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as its underpinnings, Linux Mint 13 (Maya) was recently released in three versions, KDE (new), Xfce, and Gnome-Cinnamon. We tested each version separately and while we still like Mint, we’re accumulating a nagging list of bugs — some of which are the fault of Ubuntu, and some are the twists that Linux Mint takes on its own.

Devices/Embedded

• That’s Raspberry Pis — no “e.” If you can build a supercomputer with raspberry pies, do let us know. We mean those super-small Linux PCs cooked up by some brainy researchers in Britain. Yes, you’ll need Legos too — and maybe some help from the closest 6-year-old.

• That’s how Simon Cox and a team of engineers at Britain’s University of Southampton built their supercomputer, and they’ve the published instructions so that you can build one too. The total cost was about £2,500 — or $4,031 U.S. — not including network gear, but you can build a smaller version with four Raspberry Pis for just a few hundred dollars.

• There seems to be no end in sight to the march of the tiny, sub-$100 Linux PCs arriving on the market this year, and recently two more contenders were added to the mix.

Phones

Android

• The Cloud Broadband is a hybrid device — part tablet, part all-in-one desktop and part HD television. It’s being tested in China and there are no plans as of yet to introduce the device or something like it in the United States. Still, the thing — whatever it is — is generating a good deal of interest.

• Motorola has rolled out an Android-powered desktop in China – complete with an 18.5-inch LED touchscreen (1366×768 @ 60Hz, 16:9), keyboard and mouse.

• The NexPhone is an Ubuntu for Android powered smartphone that connects to tablet, laptop, and PC docks so that you can have all your data in one device wherever you go

• Now an official division of Google, Motorola has introduced the three newest entries in its RAZR line of smartphones. Far from the flip-style RAZRs of times past, these handsets boast large screens and a multitude of Google services, running the Chrome browser and Google Maps under the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• Toys”R”Us, the toys retailing giant, just announced a tablet computer for kids that will go on sale on October 21 (2012). I did not pay too much attention to the announcement until I began to wonder what a tablet computer for kids that will cost USD $149.99 has to offer?

• Based on its specs, plenty, if you consider that Tabeo is designed for kids ages 5 and up. For one, it has a few features that Google did not even consider for the Nexus 7. The “few features” I am referring to are an HDMI port and a microSD slot.

• I had the opportunity to test drive a friend’s Asus (Google) Nexus 7, the latest entry into the tablet space. It has an attractive price point, a clear display and most of the tools that you would expect from a tablet. But despite this, there are some serious limitations that might have you think twice about adopting this device as your go to tablet. But like most devices, one man’s limitations are another man’s benefits. So let me lay out for you what I liked and did not like and we can take it from there.

Free Software/Open Source

• For those of you that slept through chemistry in high school, spectrometry (also known as spectroscopy) is the process of measuring the spectrum of light that either passes through, or is reflected off, of an object. As different chemicals and compounds have different spectral emission patterns, the wavelength of the light entering the spectrometer can be used to determine the makeup of the substance being tested.

• As the remaining founders of Diaspora hand the project over to the community, Glyn Moody asks what lessons we can learn from the success and failure of a free software project and considers the importance of thinking about what happens next.

• Planning on building the next Twitter, Facebook, or Flickr? Forget what you know about the LAMP stack, SQL-based databases, and web hosting. The building blocks for the modern web app are independent, shared-nothing, infinitely scaleable, and cloud ready. This is no longer the way of the future, it’s the way of right now.

Events

Web Browsers

Chrome

Mozilla

• For better or for worse, the modern web relies on JavaScript. That’s why JavaScript engines are critically important in modern web browsers. For years, browser vendors have competed on JavaScript benchmarks (originally just SunSpider) and apparently they will for years to come.

• Firefox OS is put through its paces in this video showing off browsing the web and photos, as well as phone functionality and other features

• Enterprise users were never really fans of Mozilla’s insanely rapid release cycle for the open source Firefox web browser. So, in order to help out enterprise users, Mozilla launched the ESR (Extended Supported Release) with Firefox 10. That ESR is still maintained with security updates as Mozilla updates the mainline branch currently at Firefox 15.

• Mozilla developer Alex Keybl has now detailed the plans for how Firefox ESR 10 users will migrate (or not) to the next ESR release. The plan is for the next ESR to be based on Firefox 17 which should be out around November 20th.

• The final stable release of Mozilla desktop and Mobile browser version 15 is now available to download. Mozilla Firefox 15 brings several improvements for the desktop and mobile, which will allow you to have a better web browsing experience in desktop and mobile as well. Check the key features and installation instructions of Mozilla Firefox 15 down below.

• Web developers will be able to drive Firefox from the command line thanks to one of the new features that has appeared in Firefox 16, which has just arrived in the Firefox Beta channel. The Developer Toolbar sits at the bottom of the browser’s window and provides quick, keyboard-driven access to many of the developer features in Firefox.

• Although Firefox has managed to stake out a sizable chunk of Web browser market share, it’s long been regarded by many users as something of a memory hog. Firefox aims to put those gluttonous ways behind it in the browser’s latest version. Firefox 15 includes a new memory management system, along with several other new features.

SaaS

Databases

• The new release of PostgreSQL, version 9.2, has arrived, four months after the appearance of the first beta version. The new release includes read and write performance boosts, index-only scanning, new web-oriented functionality, and support for range data types. As shown in the beta, the new version promises to be much faster than its predecessor primarily thanks to index-only scanning, which allows searches to avoid reading the underlying tables and instead search only indexes. This new feature is used automatically, though there are caveats as to how effective it can be all situations, but where the required data is already indexed, for example in “big data” scenarios, the boost in performance can be huge.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• In the spirit of full-disclosure, let me first tell you that I love VirtualBox. I use it every day and it is a core component of my workflow and my digital life.

• The new VirtualBox 4.2 release out today is now going to make my life, a bit easier. The new release enables the grouping of VMs, which is a simple, yet great idea. So now on my test box I can group multiple versions of a given Linux distro together for example, instead of scrolling through a (massive) list.

• The first quarter/half of 2013 will be the most exciting period for Linux Desktop – ever(!?) so far. This has to do mostly because many major distros are going to drop XServer for the shake of Wayland.

• While GTK3 port in Wayland is expected to be complete and stable by 3.8 around in March, some popular applications like Gimp, Libre Office, Firefox, VLC isn’t sure if they make it.

• Alasdair Lumsden, the project lead of OpenIndiana (OI), resigned from the project a few days ago. Following proper protocol, he announced his resignation in an email to the OI developer mailing list.

• If you do not know what OI is, it is a desktop-cum-server fork of OpenSolaris, which itself is an open source fork of Solaris. For a time, the guts of OpenIndiana was based on that of OpenSolaris, then it was recently changed to that of illumos. And, of course, illumos is a fork of OpenSolaris. Ok, this is the last use of the word fork in this paragraph, hopefully in this article.

CMS

• This week, Badgeville announced a partnership with Acquia, the enterprise Drupal integrator, to bring Badgeville gamification to Drupal installations.

• Badgeville uses gaming principles to drive positive user behavior. Peter Guagenti, vice president of products at Acquia, sees this as a logical partnership for his company. “Badgeville’s gamification platform is a natural extension of our Drupal Commons social business software, or any web experience built in Drupal,” he said.

Healthcare

• ICT team at NHS trust roll out next phase of open source patient record system developed in-house

• Moorfields eye hospital NHS foundation trust has said that it has added three new modules for prescribing, operations notes and correspondence to OpenEyes, its open source (OS) e-patient record system.

• OpenEyes was developed by an in-house team, led by consultation surgeon and former medical director at Moorfields, Bill Aylward. He told Government Computing that the trust needed to replace its existing e-patient record system and decided to develop new software itself because of the lack of a suitable commercial system.

Funding

• Google has contributed $20,000 to the Eclipse Foundation for hardware to assist in the task of performance testing the foundation’s integrated development environment (IDE). The extra contribution from Google’s Open Source Programs Office is over and above Google’s membership, and comes after the Eclipse community raised concerns about the faltering performance of Eclipse 4.2 especially when compared to Eclipse 3.8.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Linux has come on leaps and bounds in recent years. Many companies are now thinking about making the move to Linux, but the lack of compatible software is still proving a barrier. But is it really all that difficult? For example, what kinds of solutions exist for accounting on Linux?

Project Releases

• The Samba developers are moving forward with their plans to deliver the next version of the Windows file, print and directory server and have announced that the first release candidate for Samba 4 is now ready. Version 4 of the free Windows services server has been in development for some time, and now includes a directory service that is compatible with Microsoft’s Active Directory. The developers point out that this version continues to be unsuitable for production use, but that it can now be tested by interested Samba users.

Licensing

• Donnie Berkholz of RedMonk has argued that the “infrastructure stack” needs an Affero LGPL to prevent the dreaded fragmentation. Do we? I’m not convinced that it’s necessary, desirable, or likely to catch on at all.

• Donnie’s argument is that an Affero LGPL (as opposed to AGPL) would be workable because it would allow businesses add proprietary bits that link to the stack, but be forced to open up their changes to the actual infrastructure stack itself.

• I will not change the license of Mayan EDMS. I will also continue to work on the software as scheduled. There were never plans for Mayan to go closed source or to stop being released under the GPL. Still, I gave the benefit of the doubt regarding the license choice and the opinion of the community echoes mine. My only concerns were for those that were not following the terms of the GPL license and that were infringing on my copyrights. I was not insinuating any type of adverse action against those complying with the GPL license. I understand your concerns regarding Mayan EDMS, and appreciate the fervor with which you have defended it. Rest assured knowing that Mayan EDMS is and will continue to be released under the GPL.

• It’s been an interesting few days for the Mayan Electronic Document Management System (EDMS). Mayan’s developer, Roberto Rosario, made quite a stir when he spoke out against forks of his software which he believed to be violating the GPL. Reactions over Roberto’s claims and his resulting actions have been varied, and give interesting insight on the application of the GPL in the real world.

Openness/Sharing

• Last week I took something of a trip back through time. The transition began somewhere over the dark Atlantic, on my way to Brussels via Heathrow, when the person sitting next to me struck up a conversation. Improbably, I found myself discussing ODF – the OpenDocument Format – with a former Sun engineer who had followed the ODF–OOXML contest with great interest back in 2005 – 2007. I was sorry to tell him, and he was sorry to hear, that things had not gone so well in the years that followed, and that many of the bright hopes of those that had supported ODF remained to be realized.

• If you’re reading this site, we can safely assume you’re a supporter and user of open source software. If you’re a serious about it, you may even drive an open source car. But are you hardcore enough to drink open source beer?

Programming

• After the release of version 0.6.1 early this year, we were hoping that our next release would be 1.0. Unfortunately, implementing compiled module caching (a featured we deemed critical for 1.0) proved to be more difficult than expected, and we’ve ended up doing several big coding sprints interspersed with lots of other smaller scale improvements without ever quite making it happen.

• I was busy at home for the last two weeks with many people coming and going; plus, I never had any other reason to post much else. Well, now I’m into the last few days of my break at home before getting back on campus and there haven’t been as many people coming and going, so I’ve gotten some time to do a review. On DistroWatch, I read of the release of Manjaro Linux 0.8.0, and while I initially didn’t think about it further, I saw quite a few articles reviewing it and other press about it, which convinced me that I should review it as well. That is what I’m doing now.

Standards/Consortia

• The Maqetta HTML5 user interface (UI) designer has been given a visual styling makeover for the new Release 7. The Dojo Foundation-hosted project offers an IDE-styled environment for the creation of HTML5 UIs, whether for the desktop or for mobile devices. Release 7′s makeover also includes new collapsible palettes of elements on the left and right side of the in-work user interface design, a streamlined HTML file creation interface and redesigned toolbar. The update comes with a number of performance improvements in both the page editor and the preview-in-browser mode, which now incorporates Dojo’s Zazl for server-side rendering.

• The Document Foundation (TDF) has announced that it has joined OASIS (Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), the international standards development consortium which focusses on ebusiness and web service standards, as a Contributor. According to Document Foundation director Italo Vignoli, TDF will primarily focus its efforts on the Technical Committees for the Open Document Format (ODF), representing the open source productivity suite LibreOffice which it sponsors and governs.

Leftovers

• Looking at the Apple iPhone App Store, if I spend 30 seconds reading about each App to decide whether I wanted it or not, it would take me 150,000 minutes, or 2,500 hours or 104.17 days to go through them all.

Finance

• The great mystery story in American politics these days is why, over the course of two presidential administrations (one from each party), there’s been no serious federal criminal investigation of Wall Street during a period of what appears to be epic corruption. People on the outside have speculated and come up with dozens of possible reasons, some plausible, some tending toward the conspiratorial – but there have been very few who’ve come at the issue from the inside.

Censorship

• It seems that today you can’t spit in the wind without hitting a story about some US drone killing a bunch of people in a country somewhere overseas. Every known drone strike is accompanied by news reports of the location and the number of people killed. Yet, even with all these stories about drone strikes, it can a daunting task for those interested in following them to keep up with them all. So what is a drone enthusiast, or someone just appalled by the frequency of the strikes, to do?

Copyrights

• One of the reasons why we live in such an innovative society is that we’ve (for the most part) enabled a permissionless innovation society — one in which innovators no longer have to go through gatekeepers in order to bring innovation to market. This is a hugely valuable thing, and it’s why we get concerned about laws that further extend permission culture. However, according to the former Register of Copyrights, Ralph Oman, under copyright law, any new technology should have to apply to Congress for approval and a review to make sure they don’t upset the apple cart of copyright, before they’re allowed to exist. I’m not joking. Mr. Oman, who was the Register of Copyright from 1985 to 1993 and was heavily involved in a variety of copyright issues, has filed an amicus brief in the Aereo case (pdf).

• Federal prosectors added nine new felony counts against well-known coder and activist Aaron Swartz, who was charged last year for allegedly breaching hacking laws by downloading millions of academic articles from a subscription database via an open connection at MIT.

• Swartz, the 25-year-old executive director of Demand Progress, has a history of downloading massive data sets, both to use in research and to release public domain documents from behind paywalls. He surrendered in July 2011, remains free on bond and faces dozens of years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted.

• WHEN Stephanie Lenz in Pennsylvania put a video on YouTube of her 18-month-old son bopping to Prince’s song “Let’s Go Crazy” she did not expect a lawsuit. But four months and 28 views later, the musician’s recording company, Universal, howled that the 29-second “performance” infringed its copyright and demanded that YouTube take it down.

• That was in 2007. Since then computers, smartphones and the internet have made copyright law look even more obsolete. But the response so far has been not to update the laws but to widen their scope and stiffen the penalties. In January websites including Wikipedia briefly shut down in protest against tough anti-piracy laws promoted by the entertainment industry in America and elsewhere.

• Suppose I could offer you a choice of two technologies for watching TV online. Behind Door Number One sits a free-to-watch service that uses off-the-shelf technology and that buffers just enough of each show to put the live stream on the Internet. Behind Door Number Two lies a subscription service that requires custom-designed hardware and makes dozens of copies of each show. Which sounds easier to build—and to use? More importantly, which is more likely to be legal?

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