● 11.14.12

● Links 14/11/2012: Android 4.2 Source Code, Mozilla’s Shumway Project

Posted in News Roundup at 11:01 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• Google is all set to shake the stagnated desktop PC market held hostage by Microsoft. There has not been any revolutionary innovation in the desktop PC space which is monopolized by Microsoft. It took Apple to shake it with the incredible Retina display (Microsoft wouldn’t have minded keeping 1024×800 for another 10 years). Google is all set to change this and Windows 8 is going to offer all the help it can to the wider adoption of Chromebooks.

• The recently announced ARM-powered Samsung Chromebook is selling at mere $249 which is going to make quite a lot of laptop users rethink, especially those who spend all of their PC time inside a browser. Before people could place their orders, just a day before Neuxs 4 was going on sale, Google dropped another bomb on Microsoft with the announcement (and immediate availability) of a $199 Acer Chromebook.

Kernel Space

• I was lucky enough to interview Linus quite early in the history of Linux – back in 1996, when he was still living in Helsinki (you can read the fruits of that meeting in this old Wired feature.) It was at an important moment for him, both personally – his first child was born at this time – and in terms of his career. He was about to join the chip design company Transmeta, a move that didn’t really work out, but led to him relocating to America, where he remains today.

• LDT has been published, a Linux Driver Template for helping new Linux kernel developers begin writing hardware device drivers.

Graphics Stack

• There’s a new release available in the NVIDIA 310.xx Linux graphics driver series. The NVIDIA 310 Linux driver is already great for its big performance improvements thanks to Steam/Source coming to Linux and threaded OpenGL optimizations, but now the driver has been made even better.

Applications

• Gnumeric is more than a simple and limited calculation program. It is a fully-functional spreadsheet capable of manipulating and analyzing numeric data. While it is defined by developers as lightweight, Gnumeric is not short on features. For example, it offers 100 percent of the worksheet functions in Microsoft Excel, plus it has 154 functions not found in that commercial business spreadsheet.

Instructionals/Technical

Desktop Environments

GNOME Desktop

• You have to pity the GNOME project these days. Even when it does the right thing, it does so in a way that maximizes controversy.

• I’m talking about the project’s recent announcement about dropping support for fallback mode. Since it was first introduced with the GNOME 3.0 release the fallback mode has provided an approximation of the GNOME 2 desktop for users who lacked the hardware acceleration needed for the latest desktop environment. Now, GNOME developers have announced that the upcoming 3.8 release will not include the fallback mode.

• The GNOME developers announced last evening, November 12, the immediate availability for download of the stable GNOME Shell 3.6.2 user interface for the GNOME 3 desktop environment.

• GNOME Shell 3.6.2 is the second maintenance release for the GNOME Shell 3.6 UI, which is part of the GNOME 3.6.2 desktop environment update, due for release tomorrow, November 14, 2012.

• One might reasonably assume that the controversy surrounding the design of GNOME 3, which was released well over a year ago, would have abated by now. But in one of the clearest signs that it hasn’t, a leading GNOME developer recently posted a strongly worded tirade against critics of the open source desktop environment — namely, the “crazies” and “yellow journalists.”

• The developer, Federico Mena-Quintero, published his thoughts on his personal blog, not any official GNOME outlet. Still, as one of the cofounders of the GNOME project, he carries a lot of weight within the open source community.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• A little while ago I talked about our goals to get the core Ubuntu Desktop running on the Nexus 7. Again, just to be clear: the goal here is to get the lower level foundations of the Ubuntu Desktop running efficiently on the Nexus. This work is focused on optimizing the kernel, X, networking, memory consumption etc of the core of Ubuntu and not focused on making Unity into a tablet user interface. You can’t build a great house without a solid foundation.

• Rockchip’s stalwart RK3066 can best be described as a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 chip with clock speeds up to 1.6 GHz.

• The processor powers a number of tablets as well as PCs-on-a-stick, including the Z2C, Minix NEOG G 4, Kimdecent, Droid Stick T10, MK802 III, UG802 and the UG007.

• Ubuntu on smartphones remains a totally theoretical proposition. But that hasn’t stopped Canonical from releasing a video showcasing all the cool things that Ubuntu could do if it did run on phones. Is the company getting ahead of itself, or is this a sign that Ubuntu might finally be poised to make the jump to the mobile world?

Flavours and Variants

• Parsix is a wonderful distribution that offers a complete starter system with its own repositories while remaining compatible with Debian. Version 4 was just released and “brings tons of updated packages, faster live boot, improved installer system and quality new features.”

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Android

• The HTC One X, the EVO 4G LTE, and the One X+ are among our favorite phones. But the company hasn’t had a flagship device for Verizon in a long time. Now, with the Droid DNA, HTC decided to go all out and make the most impressively spec-filled smartphone the world has yet known.

• Miniand is selling a new PC-on-a-stick called the MK803. It’s about the size of a chunky USB flash drive (or the MK802, UG802, or other Android mini PCs). But it’s a fully functional little computer with a processor, storage, and memory.

• Along with the release of the new Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet on Tuesday and the rollout of updates to Android 4.2 to several existing Nexus devices, Google has also pushed the source code for the new Jelly Bean flavour of its mobile operating system to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). In a post on the Android Developers Blog, the company detailed the features in the latest Android version, which also brings with it a new SDK revision (API level 17).

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

• How is the Linux community like a terrorist organization? This is a question graduate student, IT Manager and Systems Engineer Joel Burleson-Davis recently explored for his master’s thesis on sociological and philosophical systems, including Linux.

• Though he has a technical background and is employed remotely by a structural and mechanical engineering company in Western Australia, Burleson-Davis is pursuing a Master of Arts degree, driven by his fascination with the open source community.

• My own writing was also open-source. I wrote about what you discussed in the comment threads. Readers were a rich source of discussion and ideas. The project succeeded in large part because of your thoughtful feedback. There are too many of you to mention. This year we hit a sweet spot by having lots of readers – but not too many. Andrew and I thank you.

• In a guest post on Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli’s blog, Kevin Carillo, a PhD student from the Victoria University of Wellington, is calling for participants for a survey that seeks to collect data on the experiences of newcomers joining open source communities. Carillo says he is “interested in hearing from people who are either technical or non-technical contributors, and who have had either positive or negative newcomer experiences.” The goal of his research project is to collect data on how newcomers to open source communities turn into contributors or what prevents them from doing so.

Web Browsers

Chrome

• The exciting news, however, has nothing to do with laptops at all. Like most Linux-based pseudo-embedded projects, Hexxeh’s Chromium build is getting ported to the Raspberry Pi. Once complete, a Chromium-enabled Raspberry Pi desktop machine will be a very affordable, power-sipping alternative to Google’s ChromeBox units. Projects like this really beg the question: is there anything the Raspberry Pi can’t do?

Mozilla

• As we have witnessed (in the latest months), Adobe Flash Player’s fate on Ubuntu (and Linux) is uncertain, uncertain in the sense that the widely used tool/format will not receive major new features, while Adobe will continue to provide security updates to Flash on Linux 11.2 for five years.

• The Research team at Mozilla has announced the launch of a new open SWF runtime project called “Shumway”. Described as “an HTML5 technology experiment”, Shumway is intended to provide a web-native implementation of Adobe’s SWF Flash file format, used for vector graphics and multimedia.

SaaS

• Startup ForgeRock makes its official debut today with cloud-based open-source identity and access management (IAM) software called Open Identity Stack intended to be used by enterprises and service providers to enable centralized provisioning and access management to enterprise, mobile and software-as-a-service applications.

CMS

Business

• This BeyeNETWORK spotlight features Ron Powell’s interview with Lyndsay Wise, BeyeNETWORK expert and President of WiseAnalytics. Lyndsay and Ron discuss Lyndsay’s new book that looks at open source BI from a business perspective.

• Announces enterprise-class CRM functionality will be available freely as part of Open Source CRM.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU Project today announced the opening of nominations for the 15th annual Free Software Awards. The Free Software Awards include the Award for the Advancement of Free Software and the Award for Projects of Social Benefit.

Project Releases

Public Services/Government

• The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit’s (MAMPU) Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC) is organising the Malaysian Government Open Source Software Conference (MyGOSSCON) 2012 on Nov 26-27.

Openness/Sharing

• Netflix is going to the movies with its Open Source Center on Github. In a clever play, Netflix has taken its well-known brand and placed it on GitHub to show each of its open source projects as its own movie, genre and characters.

Open Data

Open Access/Content

• On Tuesday, I was saddened to hear that Flat World Knowledge chose to give up on their idea of providing students with free university textbooks. I want to take this opportunity to explain to our users and fans why bookboon.com will not be forced to do the same.

Open Hardware

Leftovers

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Giant pandas could be left hungry and struggling to survive by global warming, scientists have warned.

• A new study predicts that climate change is set to wipe out much of the bamboo on which the bears rely for food.

Finance

Censorship

• Lawyers and campaigners have taken to Twitter to criticise the arrest. “Dear idiots at @kent_police, burning a poppy may be obnoxious, but it is not a criminal offence,” tweeted legal commentator David Allen Green, who rose to prominence when working on the case of “Twitter bomber” Paul Chambers.

• “What was the point of winning either World War if, in 2012, someone can be casually arrested by @kent_police for burning a poppy?”

• A Melbourne man who won a defamation case against search engine giant Google has been awarded $200,000 in damages.

• Milorad Trkulja, also known as Michael, sued the multinational over images of him alongside a well-known underworld figure that appeared in its search results.

• A six-person Supreme Court jury found last month that Mr Trkulja had been defamed by the images, which he first contacted Google about removing in 2009.

• Needless to say, the criticism hasn’t ceased and nothing has been taken down. In fact, the boys have moved past the DMCA process and have moved on to completely bogus legal threats to us here at Techdirt, and a number of other sites as well. As described by Popehat, who has received an identical threat, it appears that Trahan and Brittain have decided to dive right into the always-entertaining “bumptious legal threat” arena.

Privacy

• Your emails are not nearly as private as you think.

• The downfall of CIA Director David Petraeus demonstrates how easy it is for federal law enforcement agents to examine emails and computer records if they believe a crime was committed. With subpoenas and warrants, the FBI and other investigating agencies routinely gain access to electronic inboxes and information about email accounts offered by Google, Yahoo and other Internet providers.

DRM

Intellectual Monopolies

• It looks like college coaches aren’t the only ones restricting Twitter use. Todd Dybas, a reporter for the Tacoma News Tribune, Tweeted yesterday that he was “reprimanded” by the University of Washington Athletic Department for apparently Tweeting too much during Sunday’s 85-63 win over Loyola.

Copyrights

• Every other Friday there is a court hearing in Sweden to discuss the continued detainment of Gottfrid Svartholm. A request to detain the Pirate Bay co-founder for an additional two weeks was granted yesterday but not without more drama being added to the proceedings. Gottfrid was arrested under suspicion of being involved in a second hacking case along with accusations of four instances of serious fraud and four attempted frauds. Further details of the alleged crimes are being kept secret.

• A few folks have sent in this story on the blog of the wonderful (and super popular) site Cake Wrecks, which (as the name suggests) highlights hilariously bad cake designs, supposedly done by “professionals.” Not surprisingly, the site is well known among those who wield cake decorating bags. However, some do not appreciate the wonders of such a site… especially when it features their own cakes. Cake Wrecks recently put up a blog post in which it reveals that at least one Safeway (a part of the giant supermarket chain) has apparently told its bakery that there is a “no photography” rule, officially set up to avoid having its cakes show up on the site — though, they’re using copyright as their excuse:…

• Yesterday, Louis CK announced the seemingly impossible: his next comedy special will air on HBO, and also be available as a DRM-free download like his revolutionary Beacon Theatre show. Yes, even the network so infamous for its tight grip on content that fans have literally begged it to take their money can’t ignore the overwhelming success of CK’s open, inexpensive, highly accessible approach to content distribution.

• Last week, we noted that one of Hollywood’s favorite Congressional Reps., Howard Berman had lost his re-election bid (in part due to re-districting, putting him up against another incumbent). For years, Berman has been a go to guy for the entertainment industry looking to pass dubious copyright expansion bills. Berman used to run the “IP Subcommittee” of the Judiciary Committee — which you would think is a major conflict of interest, since he (literally) represented part of Hollywood. Amusingly, when he moved on to head the Foreign Affairs Committee, the next line for the IP Subcommittee was Rep. Rick Boucher — a noted copyright reform advocate. Magically, the Judiciary Committee made the IP Subcommittee disappear. When Boucher lost in the next election, and a maximalist was available again, magically the subcommittee reappeared.

• Either way, as a bunch of sources have been reporting, now that Berman lost, he’s on the short list of possible candidates to become the new Secretary of State after Hillary Clinton steps down early next year.

• Last year, we wrote about a silly and uninformed lawsuit filed by eccentric rich guy Alki David against CBS. David has an online TV company, FilmOn, which has some similarities to Aereo and other online rebroadcasters. The networks sued the company, of course, and David has since gone on an odd and vindictive campaign against them. As someone who tends to think services like his should be both legal and embraced, I’d like to support him, but his legal campaign is just ridiculous and now has the possibility of causing real and serious harm. His reason for suing CBS was that a few years ago CBS bought CNET, and CNET has (for many, many years) run a site called Download.com. Download.com is a service that many software providers use to distribute their software. David claimed that because Download.com (a site owned by CNET which was — only relatively recently — purchased by CBS) distributed Limewire — which was eventually found to be infringing — that CBS was also guilty of copyright infringement. That original lawsuit was dumped pretty quickly, after the judge noted that David had failed to show what copyrights were being infringed (a key piece in any copyright claim).

• After a study pointed out that file-sharers spend more money on music than their non-sharing counterparts, the RIAA felt the need to respond. The music industry group is now characterizing news reports on the findings as “misleading” and is ready to burst the bubble. According to the RIAA there is a straightforward reason why P2P users buy more – they are simply better engaged music fans than average music consumers. … Eh?

• Six years ago, a satire site wrote a story about how the copyright industry wanted more money if you invited friends to watch a movie in your living room. This notion has now been patented in new technology: automated headcounts coming to a living room near you, to enable new forms of restrictions. Apparently, the copyright industry takes six years to catch up with the very worst satire of it.

• First of all, they seem to be claiming that search engines that index content, show a snippet and link people to the original content are “piracy.” That’s crazy talk. Furthermore, while they don’t name the “search engine” they claim that it “offered” these articles. Of course, if it really posted all the articles itself, then there is no need to change copyright laws — the company could already sue them for infringement. However, assuming that they’re really talking about Google or just about any other search engine, what they really mean is that the search engines aggregated the content and linked people back to the original. The “cost” to produce those articles is irrelevant to the overall discussion. Yes, it costs money, but it’s the job of a business model to bring in even more money. If the business geniuses who run your paper are too clueless to figure out how to monetize the traffic from Google, then perhaps you deserve to go out of business.

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