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● 06.18.10

● Links 18/6/2010: Parted Magic 4.11, AT&T Against Linux Freedom

Posted in News Roundup at 12:28 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ HP: The Linux distributor?

• Hardware companies don’t tend to have their own Linux distributions. IBM uses Linux everywhere, but they don’t have their own Linux. Dell will be happy to sell you notebooks and netbooks with Ubuntu or a workstation or server with RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). But, no major OEM (original equipment manufacturer) has had a house-brand Linux… until now. HP has recently bought not one, but two Linux distributions.

• Surely HP is not getting into the Linux distribution business? Are they!?

• HP first acquired its own Linux distribution bough Palm to get its hand on webOS. For some reason, a lot of people seemed to think that Palm was still using its old proprietary operating system, Palm OS. Nope. WebOS has proprietary extensions but this mobile device OS with its Linux kernel heart has more in common with Android and MeeGo than it does with its proprietary fore-bearers.

• [...]

• The one thing I can’t see HP doing though is releasing its Linux takes to other people as full Linux distributions. Instead, I see HP using its Linuxes to add value to their own offerings, not as something they’d sell, nevermind give away, to other vendors or users. HP will do what it needs to do to keep from running afoul of the GPL, but that will be it.

=> ↺ Linux Professional Institute and Government of Tunisia to certify IT graduates

• The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world’s premier Linux certification organization (http://www.lpi.org), announced with the Ministry of Communication Technologies of Tunisia (http://www.mincom.tn) a program to train and certify young graduates in Linux and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

=> ↺ First Linux to appear in Flemish comic series ?

• This is something I found via Dag Wieers.

Desktop

=> ↺ Improving The Linux Desktop? Why, It’s Elementary

• The motivation for elementary started long before project leader Daniel Foré had ever even heard of Linux. Back in those early days he was a Windows user (like many of us), who got caught up in the idea of making Windows look like OS X.

• Later on (I’m proud to say) he discovered Kororaa Linux and was amazed at the power and flexibility of the Linux desktop. This sparked an underlying passion for great computing and a desire to create the most amazing desktop possible. Through these experiences he began his first project, making a Crystal style icon set for GNOME, and shortly thereafter The elementary Project was born.

• There are now many parts to elementary and the project is currently working on several ideas at once. Still prevalent is the ever popular elementary icon set and GTK theme (called eGTK for short), but searching wider than that we find efforts to improve Midori (the lightweight GTK Webkit based web browser) and even Nautilus, GNOME’s built-in file manager. There’s even an elementary Theme Addon for Firefox. The goal for elementary is to improve many individual aspects of the Linux desktop and feed them upstream, while at the same time pulling it all together into a new and exciting desktop experience. Many of their modifications to Nautilus for example came from rejected Bugzilla patches and those that weren’t, have been sent upstream. If their work to-date is anything to go by, this is definitely one project to keep an eye on.

=> ↺ Dell joining Acer and HP in Chrome OS hardware

• A list of config files has been spotted within Chrome OS listing not only long-standing likely suspects Acer as hardware partners, but HP and Dell too.

• [...]

• According to Download Squad, a list of files within the .git repository, which look after Chrome’s hardware support in the build process, indicate that the three hardware makers are advanced enough in their preparations to be specified in config files.

Old PCs

=> ↺ “Smart Reuse With Open Source”

• Fosdick points out that with Linux, computers up to ten years old (basically Pentium III or better) are reusable. Microsoft’s difficult and expensive refurbisher program can only reuse computers up to about five years old.

=> ↺ Where in the world?

• Time for a fresh install of Linux! If only I had remembered to pack an installation CD along with my jim-jams and toothbrush… My Dad’s PC is so old, it doesn’t have a CD burner, nor does it boot from a USB stick.

Server

=> ↺ Appro Deploys a World Class Linux Cluster Testbed Solution to LLNL in Support of the Hyperion Project

• The Linux cluster solution consists of 80 Appro 1U 1423X, dual socket customized server based on Intel® Xeon® processor 5600 series with 24 GB of memory and 4 PCIe2 x8 slots.

=> ↺ Security in Migrating to Linux on IBM System z

=> ↺ Anubex Migrates Swets’ IDMS Apps from Mainframe to Linux

• Swets, the leading international subscription services company and Anubex, leader in automated application modernization, are pleased to announce the successful conclusion of a two-year cross-platform migration of one of Swets’ enterprise applications. The project, which was executed by Anubex in collaboration with the Swets IT organization, involved the conversion, migration, and modernization of Swets’ last remaining back-end application developed with IDMS technology.

Ballnux

=> ↺ openSuSE 11.3 RC1 Installation

• Overall, this looks like it is shaping up to be a very good release from openSuSE.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ The kernel column #88

• Five years of Git Christian Ludwig noted that it’s now been five years since Linus Torvalds – frustrated by the fallout from use of the proprietary BitKeeper software – wrote the guts of the Git distributed revision control system in the space of about a week. A lot more effort has gone in since then, and Junio C Hamano (as well as many others) continue to do an excellent job further developing and maintaining Linus’s original invention. Git (now at version 1.7.1) is used by a vast number of different open source projects, and tools like gitweb, github and others make collaboration between developers easier than ever before. Christian Ludwig has made a fun video showing Git kernel history,

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ New ATI Linux Video Driver Has OpenGL 4.0 and RHEL 5.5 Support

• Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced last evening, June 16th, another improved version of its ATI Catalyst Linux display driver, available for both x86 and x86_64 architectures. ATI Catalyst 10.6 introduces final and stable support for the Red Hat Enterprise 5.5 Linux operating system, official OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3 support, and many 2D performance improvements. The software version was updated to 8.741.

Applications

=> ↺ Redshift Keeps Your Eyes Sharp & Helps You Sleep [Linux]

• If you spend a lot of time looking at your computer – and if you read this blog I’m betting you do – you might notice that after a while your eyes start to hurt, and that you have trouble going to sleep at night. There’s a good reason for this: your computer screen is essentially a lightbulb, and you’re looking straight into it for hours at a time.

• [...]

• Linux users, it seems, were left out of the fun: F.lux does not work on Linux. That’s where Redshift comes in. The program is currently in development, and currently requires the user to have no fear of the command line, but don’t worry: it’s not too hard to use.

=> ↺ Four console document converters

• I have never gotten a resume in OpenOffice format, but when I do, I shall hire that person on the spot. Provided I can read their resume of course, and in that case I’ll probably rely on o3read. I’ve used o3read plenty of times in the past and it always pleases me to see it spin quickly through a document, spitting out the good stuff and tossing the bad stuff down /dev/null. Or wherever it goes.

Instructionals

=> ↺ gnome-terminal empty

=> ↺ Convert a PDF file into a single Image using ImageMagick

=> ↺ Boot-Up Manager (BUM) – Graphical runlevel editor

=> ↺ Using Symantec NetBackp With A Fedora 12 Live CD

=> ↺ How to change background color to transparent in GIMP

=> ↺ Transfer Installed Packages to New Computer or Drive in Ubuntu 10.04

=> ↺ Audio Recording in Linux: An Introduction [PART 1]

=> ↺ Build linux tablet with a 4.4″ OLED display

=> ↺ BackupPC not graphing? Pool size won’t shrink? Try this fix for BackupPC v3.1

=> ↺ Tweak your RGBA enabled desktop

=> ↺ Perl Array Reference and Dereference Tutorial With Practical Examples

=> ↺ Auto-Hide Mouse Pointer in Ubuntu When Idle

=> ↺ Using rdist to copy files to multiple hosts

=> ↺ Cloning With Linux 3 Ways

=> ↺ Early Intervention in Data Recovery

=> ↺ Creating and Manipulating the Linux Volumes Can Cause Data Loss

=> ↺ Open Source Recovery – Best Way to Retrieve Lost Data

=> ↺ 7 Free, Open Source Tomes For Your Edification

Games

=> ↺ ntris: an idea taken a step too far

• At the start of ntris, you could get any of the 29 pieces made of 1-5 squares. These pieces have, on average, 4.38 squares per piece. The board is 12 columns wide, so you have to clear 4.38/12 = 0.365 lines per drop. If you use only straight pieces to clear lines, you clear on average 15 lines every 29 pieces, or 0.517 lines per piece. But clearing multiple lines at a time yields large score bonuses, so if you’re greedy, you’ll only clear lines when you get a 4-long or a 5-long. Naiively, this means that you only clear 9 lines every 29 pieces – 0.310 lines per piece – so you are bound to lose.

=> ↺ Gaming box lets Linux play the slots

• Acrosser announced a PC that can run Linux inside arcade gaming consoles or slot machines. The ACE-S8700 includes golden finger and ccTalk interfaces, a VGA output, four serial ports, plus an intrusion logger and up to 512KB of battery-backed static RAM, the company says.

K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

=> ↺ Epic Moment: Free and fast graphics at last

• So, what’s the epic moment? Well, the epic moment for me was seeing KDE Plasma start up with the Free driver, enable compositing automatically and by that delivering a much more beautiful and functional desktop to me, out of the box.

Distributions

=> ↺ The fragile balance between fast and reliable

• Being a Distro developer, or a packager if you prefer, is not always that simple. Many people think that our “job” is quite straight forward. All we need to do is to read the INSTALL file and then adapt the instructions into an ebuild format and we are done. Well it is definitely more than that.

• [...]

• Every time a new version is available, a series of tests need to be run to make sure we retain a high level of QA in our tree. Such tests involve multiple compilations with various compilation flags, compilers, use flags, etc etc

New Releases

=> ↺ Parted Magic 4.11

• The Parted Magic OS employs core programs of GParted and Parted to handle partitioning tasks with ease, while featuring other useful programs (e.g. Clonezilla, Partimage, TestDisk, Truecrypt, G4L, SuperGrubDisk, ddrescue, etc…) and an excellent set of documentation to benefit the user.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Red Hat’s revenue glass ceiling is its own making

• Whitehurst seems to be saying that every $1 made by Red Hat results in $10 of existing revenue loss to established vendors.

Debian Family

=> ↺ BOSS is Nobody’s Boss!

• Developed by C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), it’s yet another Debian fork with packages more dated than the current Debian stable, Lenny (Remember, Squeeze is close to freezing and is unofficially ready for mass consumption). BOSS’ software stack has all the usual suspects such as – Web server, proxy server, Database server, Mail server, Network server, File and Print server, SMS server, LDAP server, plus all major Indian language packs. However, all these and the underlying kernel, desktop environments and userland is very old. Now, the latest, at version 3.0, it still sticks to linux 2.6.22, xorg 1.3, gnome 2.20, OOo 2.2 and FF 3.

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Review: Ubuntu Linux 10.04 – It just works

• Out of the box comes a complete operating system with a full office suite (OpenOffice), FireFox webbrowser, CD/DVD burner, movie editor, IM-client, BitTorrent-Client and so much more. You can practically immediately start working and doing everyday tasks right after the installation. It’s still a complete mystery why the .mp3 support is missing, but it take a few seconds to fix that and start listening to your music collection.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 10.04 Upgrade: Best Practices Checklist

• Have you been thinking about upgrading your computer to Ubuntu 10.04? I recently made the leap, at the prompting of my Update Manager. The process went fairly smoothly, but I did have to deal with a couple of minor annoyances. Since you never know exactly what may happen when you decide to upgrade, here are a few tips to get you started.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick Meerkat” To be Radical, Promises Shuttleworth

• Canonical chief, Mark Shuttleworth said on his blog recently that the Ubuntu version 10.10 will be focussed on being social and being fast. According to him, the OS is getting faster and faster when it comes to boot times but “the final push remains”. In the mean time, he said that the Netbook Edition of Ubuntu 10.10 will have a revamped UI and it will be the fastest booting and the fastest to network OS for netbooks at that time. Canonical is of course the company that funds and oversees the Ubuntu project.

• In keeping with the alliterative and animal naming scheme — Ubuntu 10.10 is being called “Maverick Meerkat”. Meerkats are social creatures by nature. They are very family oriented. And their name has been adopted to signify the emphasize being laid on being social.

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Jolicloud: Ubuntu Linux Touch Screens Meet the Cloud

• Ubuntu Linux will ship on roughly 5 million computers this year, according to Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth. And that number could grow further thanks to Jolicloud — an Ubuntu-based operating system designed to blend netbooks with cloud computing. Moreover, Jolicloud recently gained touch-screen support, which could position the OS for mobile Internet devices (MIDs). But is Jolicloud ready for partners? Here are some insights.

=> ↺ Linux Mint 9 RC Backs Up Your Data and Application Choices

• We’ve previously suggested that Linux Mint, a distant cousin of Ubuntu, might make for a better beginner’s Linux OS. With the inclusion of an incremental backup tool, app selection backups, and a smarter software finder, Mint is hitting its mark.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Low Cost ARM11 Development Kits Runs Main-line Linux and Android

• Witech recently released another Low cost ARM11 development kit, With the price of US$ 139.00 for an ARM11 OK6410 development kit plus a 4.3 inch TFT LCD, Witech pronounce that the OK6410 features the best price-performance ratio to date.

=> ↺ Bluecherry releases a Linux MPEG-4 compression card

• OPEN SAUCE security surveillance vendor Bluecherry says it has released the software driver for version 2 of its Linux based hardware compression card.

Nokia/MeeGo

=> ↺ Nokia S Series – The MeeGo Smartphones We Want To See

• It’s always been expected that the Maemo based Nokia N900 will eventually run MeeGo, but it would be nice to see a whole range of smartphones running this smarter than smart Open Source OS.

=> ↺ A Review Of MeeGo v1.0: Is It Good Enough For Your Netbook?

• When I first set out to try MeeGo, I had hoped to boot up the live USB image on my netbook. What I soon discovered, however, is that it would not work. My netbook (an EeePC 1201n) has an Nvidia Ion graphics chipset, which is not supported by MeeGo (along with ATI and Intel GMA 500 chipsets). I further found that my other netbook (EeePC 900) was also not supported because it was a pre-Atom model, and MeeGo only supports Intel Atom processors.

• [...]

• MeeGo seems like a pretty decent operating system. On the surface, however, it does not seem very different from Moblin, which would make it appear to be a one-sided Intel affair. Underneath, however, Nokia has integrated it with the QT widget set and underlying Linux kernel development merged from Maemo. All of this makes MeeGo very fast, which I was not able to accurately test in Qemu.

• Overall, it seems good, but it will need some screen size improvement to work well on netbooks. For tablets, the large tabs at the top will work nicely. Assuming Intel and Nokia plan to support a larger number of devices than they currently do, MeeGo will be a nice addition.

Android

=> ↺ Droid X vs iPhone 4: The Last Phone Ringing

• Today there are many phones which may give the iPhone run for money if they had a ‘salesperson’ like Steve Jobs. This is no hidden fact that Apple has a fan following and most of its devices sell owing to this following. Apple fans ignore and reject the limitations these devices have, instead of asking for a device that fit their needs, they adopt to the devices.

• [...]

• On the contrary, Android is all about healthy competition. Droid X will have full support for Adobe Flash (Adobe should now release Flash under some Free Software license). Thus Droid X will have marketing backing of Motorola, Verizon and Adobe.

=> ↺ Is AT&T Polluting Android Phones?

• AT&T seems be pushing its iPhone philosophy on Android phone. The company is going against the very foundation of Free Software or Open Source on which Android is based.

=> ↺ AT&T CEO: We’re Happy Where We Are With Android Compared to Verizon

• Randall also comments on their desire to push Yahoo! Search on most of their devices, stating they don’t like Google’s decision on keeping their own search engine as the operating system’s default. The reason? It’s anti-open-source. I’m not going to go too deep with trying to argue Randall’s statements, but how is being given the ability to change Android’s default search and services experience to whatever you want “anti-open-source”?

=> ↺ Android leads growing Linux-based phone market

• A new report by ABI Research says Linux-based smart phones will outpace the rate of growth of the overall smart phone market by 2015. The drivers behind the expanding market share

Tablets

=> ↺ SmartDevices SmartQ V7 Linux Tablet

• SmartDevices has upgraded their Ubuntu Linux SmartQ 7 tablet and renamed it SmartQ V7 and classified it as a HD MID. The SmartQ V7 is a big brother of the SmartQ V5 has been upgraded to the Telechips TCC8900 ARM 11 CPU that runs at 600MHz and had the RAM doubled from 128MB to 256MB DD2 and runs at three times the speed @330MHz.

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ TransferSummit – Open innovation in software means Open Source

• Open source projects are very probably the best way to efficiently bring software experts together today. Industry associations and interest groups might fulfil that role in other industries, but developers like to express themselves in code, and open source projects are where that happens today.

=> ↺ credativ, LLC and Forest Informatics, Inc. Announce Partnership, Training for Open Source Geospatial Database Analytics, Potential for Massive Cost Savings

• credativ, a global open source consulting, service, and support company, announced today a partnership with Forest Informatics, Inc., a provider of turnkey and custom solutions for forest resource management. Together, they will offer introductory and advanced training on geospatial analytics, initially in San Diego, California.

=> ↺ Updating the Open Source PBX Story

• One of the big stories of 2009 was the finding by John Malone of Eastern Management Group, reported first on No Jitter, that open source systems account for 18% of the IP-PBX market. Now John is updating his research, so I encourage you to go take his survey and help as we continue to refine our picture of the IP-PBX user base.

=> ↺ Being locked in with proprietary software

• This is why I greatly prefer open source software. It is completely free as in freedom, and we can use it anonymously and that’s just OK with everybody. I don’t like giving away lots of details to vendors about any of my hardware/software. Many times, they don’t need to know anything more than the simple fact that you’ve paid them money, and you own their product.

=> ↺ Azul Systems To Open Source Significant Technology in Managed Runtime Initiative

=> ↺ Azul Systems Launches Open Initiative for Improving Managed Runtimes

• As part of the launch of the Initiative, Azul is contributing an open source reference implementation based on enhancements to OpenJDK and the Linux operating system.

=> ↺ When It Comes to Security, Openness Isn’t Always a Virtue – Con: Joe Brockmeier

• Companies have not shown a tendency to be entirely forthcoming about security breaches unless they have to be. It’s not only impossible to examine the code for vulnerabilities, it’s also impossible to know exactly what is being done with your data. This should scare the hell out of people when talking about their personal data.

Web Browsers

=> ↺ New Firefox 4 ‘Minefield’ beta sports WebM video and tweaked UI

• Firefox 4 is on track for a planned November release, with Mozilla this week unveilling its latest ‘developer preview’ of the browser. (Download at your own risk here – the “1.9.3 alpha” version number on that page refers to the Gecko rendering engine in Firefox 4.)

=> ↺ The real Chrome threat to Firefox

=> ↺ Firefoxers howl as privacy add-on auto updates with ‘bloatware’

=> ↺ Does Firefox Have Cooties?

• What’s the deal? Is Firefox just not good enough any more? Not hardly. Firefox is still hanging around 31 percent of market share (from Wikimedia), compared to Chrome’s almost seven percent.

=> ↺ Chromium-based Flock beta offers useful social features

• Flock is reinventing its social Web browser, developing a totally new version on top of Google’s Chromium open source project. A beta release of the new Flock, which was made available for download today, offers a radically different user experience than previous versions of the browser.

=> ↺ Shaky extension sync debuts in Chrome

Databases

=> ↺ Ingres Supports the Dutch Police in Effort to Prevent Football Related Violence Across Europe

=> ↺ EnterpriseDB and Interactive Ideas Partner to Deliver Open Source Database Products Across United Kingdom and Ireland

CMS

=> ↺ WordPress 3.0 adds multi-site support

• The WordPress development team have released version 3.0 of their popular open source blogging and publishing platform, code named “Thelonious”. The thirteenth major update has more than 2,700 changes, including 1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements.

Education

=> ↺ Questionmark Supports Moodle Course Management Integration

• The Questionmark Moodle Connector enables instructors to link their Moodle courses to course evaluations, quizzes, tests and exams deployed using Perception. Instructors may specify assessment dates and limit the number of times students may access assessments.

Healthcare

=> ↺ Alliance develops medical software for smartphones

• The Continua Health Alliance is developing a software library of source code to run medical applications on select smartphones. The work is being done in partnership with Vignet, a medical software developer.

Business Intelligence

=> ↺ Business Intelligence Alternatives ‘Good Enough’ for Many Users

• While lower upfront cost isn’t the only reason to consider open source software, it’s one that initially gets the attention of many organizations. (I guess most of us are no different. When I’m shopping, I generally head to the clearance racks first. Who wants to pay full price if you don’t have to?)

• In fact, with a continued emphasis on reducing IT costs, organizations are “obliged to at least evaluate open source as an alternative” to traditionally licensed software, said David White, a senior research analyst for The Aberdeen Group, when I interviewed him about his recent report, “Open Source Business Intelligence: The Cost, Utilization and Innovation Factors that Matter.”

Finance

=> ↺ How to Make Money on Open Source Software

• We are big fans of the open source software movement. We believe that free and open software opens up markets and new capabilities much more quickly than closed and expensive software products. In the comments to my post on another open source effort we are funding, MongoDB, there was a discussion about why a VC firm would want to invest in free and open software. In that discussion, I explained that there are a number of ways to make money with open source software. The most obvious one is the “Red Hat” model of building a services and support business on top of the open source software. Red Hat has revenues of almost $600mm per year and boasts a public market valuation of over $5bn. MySQL, which also used that approach, sold to Sun for $1bn.

=> ↺ Open Source VAT software, would you risk it?

• There’s a good deal of debate in technology circles these days as to what point level source software, or indeed free and open source software, can fulfil our needs – especially when business gets mission critical. For individuals, mission critical status comes along when it comes to our health, our family, our house and our money so Tax and VAT certainly come within radius.

Project Releases

=> ↺ CollabNet offers enhanced Subversion variant

• CollabNet on Thursday is introducing Subversion Edge, a distribution of the Subversion software version control system featuring a Web-based management interface, the ViewVC repository viewer, and the Apache Web server.

=> ↺ RDPDesk Releases New Version of RD Connection manager

• A free open source Remote Desktop management solution licensed under the GNU General Public License, RD Connection manager simplifies the management of remote connections to multiple servers and desktops. With RD Connection manager, users can easily manage remote connections to Unix, Windows, MAC and Citrix systems, said company officials.

=> ↺ Open Source Remote Desktop Connection Manager from RDPDesk Updated; Provides Remote Admin Tool

Government

=> ↺ Norwegian Free Software Center Opposes Government Pro-FOSS Policy

• I may be missing something, but it looks to me as though the Norwegian Free Software Center is not only abandoning its mandate, but working against it. There is no evidence to justify crying conspiracy, and no doubt Gundersen and Austlid are sincere, yet you have to wonder how they could argue against the very cause they are supposed to promote.

• However, that is not the reason that I have spent time discussing their argument. With all respect, Norway is a single small country, and, living halfway around the world from it, I am unlikely to be affected much by what happens there.

• All the same, Gundersen and Austlid’s arguments are worth examining for their own sake. One day, those of us outside Norway may be lucky enough to hear our own federal, provincial or city governments propose pro-free software policies. If we do, then we will undoubtedly hear similar arguments against the policies, and need to start thinking about how to debunk them.

• Unless I am mistaken, though, the only difference will be that the counter arguments that we hear will most likely come from the critics and enemies of free software — not those who are supposed to support it.

Licensing

=> ↺ Publication Of Third Issue – International Free And Open Source Software Law Review

• The Editorial Committee is delighted to announce issue three of the ‘International Free and Open Source Software Law Review’ (IFOSS L. Rev.) is now available. IFOSSL. Rev. is a peer-reviewed biannual legal review dedicated to analysis and debate around Free and Open Source Software legal issues.

Openness/Sharing

=> ↺ Open source brings new meaning to user-generated content

• OpenBlock is the open source software powering the project and is being developed by the nonprofit group OpenPlans. They’re partnering with The Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri and The Boston Globe on two separate, but similar, projects.

Open Data

=> ↺ Tricky Sea Ice Predictions Call for Scientists to Open Their Data

• With sea ice levels in the Arctic at record lows this month, a new report comparing scientists’ predictions calls for caution in over-interpreting a few weeks worth of data from the North Pole.

• The Sea Ice Outlook, which will be released this week, brings together more than a dozen teams’ best guesses at how much sea ice will disappear by the end of the warm season in September. This year began with a surprise. More sea ice appeared than anticipated, nearing its mean level from 1979-2007. But then ice levels plummeted through May and into June. Scientists have never seen the Arctic with less ice at this time of year in the three decades they’ve been able to measure it, and they expect below average ice for the rest of the year.

Open Access/Content

=> ↺ Can You Make Money from Free Stuff?

• It’s good to see companies like Getty Images trying to include material that’s licensed under Creative Commons licences, but it will be interesting to see how this all works in practice. It does, in any case, emphasise that making money from free stuff, while perfectly possible, requires careful thought about the licensing. But then you knew that anyway.

=> ↺ BCS EGM: It’s Time To Vote For Transparency

• Despite the unbalanced presentation on the official BCS web site (where there is no attempt to represent the views of the loyal and senior members who felt compelled to call the meeting as a last resort – their case is on their own site), the issues the EGM raises are serious and reflect a widespread disquiet among active BCS members. The webcast by the BCS President and CEO on June 10 didn’t make things any better, attacking the messengers further rather than responding to the message, and today I’m left with the same unease as I had when I first saw the EGM was happening.

Open Hardware

=> ↺ Open source automobiles?

• What is interesting about Riversimple is its business model. To begin with the cars are all leased for a monthly fee, not bought, and secondly, all the technology and design is open source. According to its publicity,

=> ↺ Future of Health: The Open Prosthetics Project

• The Open Prosthetics Project is producing useful innovations in the field of prosthetics and freely sharing the designs. This project is an open source collaboration between users, designers and funders with the goal of making creations available for anyone to use and build upon.

Leftovers

Security/Aggression

=> ↺ MP in talks over Birmingham ‘terror cameras’

• An MP is meeting the crime-prevention group involved a row over surveillance cameras in parts of Birmingham with large Muslim populations.

• Hall Green Labour MP Roger Godsiff is seeking reassurance there will be a “thorough” consultation before the 218 cameras are switched on.

=> ↺ The Case for Calling Them Nitwits

• When terrorists do execute an attack, or come close, they often have security failures to thank, rather than their own expertise. Consider Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — the Nigerian “Jockstrap Jihadist” who boarded a Detroit-bound jet in Amsterdam with a suicidal plan in his head and some explosives in his underwear. Although the media colored the incident as a sophisticated al-Qaeda plot, Abdulmutallab showed no great skill or cunning, and simple safeguards should have kept him off the plane in the first place. He was, after all, traveling without luggage, on a one-way ticket that he purchased with cash. All of this while being on a U.S. government watch list.

=> ↺ Stalin’s harvest

• A PLAINTIVE siren wails as a government unit, invisible in the darkness, patrols. “We will shoot anyone on the streets. Military curfew. Do not leave your homes,” comes the clipped command in Russian over the loudspeaker. A round of tank-artillery fire rings out. A machinegun crackles a response. This is “calm”, of a sort, after the bloody mayhem of inter-ethnic violence between the Kyrgyz majority and the Uzbek minority that broke out in southern Kyrgyzstan on June 10th. But in Osh, as elsewhere, the wounds that have been opened may take generations to heal.

Environment

=> ↺ Finding Nemo 2: Escape from Oilglobs”Disney, Pixar, and BP present ‘Finding Nemo 2: Escape from Oilglobs’

=> ↺ Imágenes de Buscando a Nemo 2 (Finding Nemo 2)

=> ↺ Hitler finds out about the BP Oil Spill

=> ↺ Reporters clash with Coast Guard, BP security

• Throughout the Gulf oil spill ordeal, many have accused BP of saying one thing publicly while doing the exact opposite in reality. Case in point: The company’s insistence that it has made no effort to prevent oil spill cleanup workers from wearing masks and respirators to protect themselves from chemical exposure while doing their work.

• Through spokesmen, the company has repeatedly denied to this reporter and numerous others that it had issued any threats to terminate workers—and that their refusal to outfit the workers with protective clothing and equipment has nothing to do with cost-cutting or concern with the harsh optics of hazmat-suited workers in the Gulf waters.

=> ↺ LOL [BP is not aware of any reason for share price movement]

=> ↺ Hayward deflects questions about well design, safety

• Lawmakers are growing increasingly frustrated in a congressional hearing over the oil spill today, as BP CEO Tony Hayward repeatedly deflected questions about potentially calamitous decisions that dictated the design and development of its now-leaking Macondo well.

=> ↺ China plans to put out its coalfield fires

• IS THIS, finally, the end for the gigantic coal fires that have been burning in Inner Mongolia, China, for 50 years?

• The province’s government announced earlier this month that it would spend 200 million yuan ($29.4 million) a year through to 2012 on extinguishing over 60 fires that burn, unchecked, at seven of its coalfields.

=> ↺ CO2 has controlled climate for millions of years

• Carbon dioxide has been the main factor controlling global temperatures for millions of years, according to a new study.

Finance

=> ↺ UK deficit and government borrowing – how has it changed since 1946?

• Britain’s budget deficit came in lower than feared last month, the latest indication that the public finances are over the worst of the financial crisis.

• The government borrowed £16bn in May, below last year’s £17.4bn and less than the £18bn expected by City economists.

• However, the nation’s debt has now reached £903bn – equivalent to 62.2% of GDP, the highest since records began in 1993, underlining the task faced by the coalition government in cutting the debt burden.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

=> ↺ Why can’t journalists handle public criticism?

• Why do so many journalists find it so hard to handle public criticism? If you’re an athlete, you’re used to it. If you’re an artist, critics will regularly take you down. If you are in government, the pundits and now the bloggers will show no mercy. If you’re in business, the market will punish you.

• In all these cases, the seasoned professional learns to deal with it. But over and over today, we encounter the sorry spectacle of distinguished reporters losing it when their work is publicly attacked — or columnists sneering at the feedback they get in poorly moderated web comments.

• Clark Hoyt recently concluded his tenure as the New York Times’ “public editor” (aka ombudsman) with a farewell column that described the reactions of Times journalists to his work. It seems the process of being critiqued in public in their own paper continues to be alienating and dispiriting to them. Journalists typically, and rightly, see themselves as bearers of public accountability — holding the feet of government officials, business leaders and other public figures to the fire of their inquiries. Yet, remarkably, a surprising number of journalists still find it hard to accept being held to account themselves.

=> ↺ HTTPS Everywhere

• HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox extension produced as a collaboration between The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It encrypts your communications with a number of major websites.

=> ↺ Toxic net filters ‘shelved until after election’

• The internet censorship policy has joined the government’s list of “politically toxic subjects” and will almost certainly be shelved until after the federal election, Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam says.

• Prime Minister Kevin Rudd – already facing a voter backlash over several perceived policy failures – is expected to call the election before the end of the year and the feeling of many in Canberra is that next week will be the last sitting week of Parliament.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Significant Objects Becomes A Book… More Infinite Goods Creating New Scarcities

• Last year, we wrote about a fascinating “art” project, called “Significant Objects,” that involved a bunch of writers buying up random cheap/worthless trinkets, but then listing them on eBay along with a creative (fictional) story about the object. The “story” was given away for free, but the object cost money. What those involved in the project quickly found was that these worthless trinkets were suddenly selling for a lot more than their nominal “price.” It was a perfect example of how an infinite good (the story), when properly attached to a scarce good (the trinket), can make that scarce good much more valuable.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Police Raids Tear Apart Hungarian BitTorrent Scene

• Through co-ordinated raids across the country, Hungarian police have attempted to decimate the country’s BitTorrent scene. Following the deployment of many officers, dozens of servers were seized and many of the country’s trackers shut down, including the prominent 900,000 peer ‘ncore’ tracker. An ISP, university and many seedboxes were also targeted.

=> ↺ EMI Rejig Gives Faxon Control Of Rights-Hungry Label

• The umpteenth restructure at EMI Group, since the Terra Firma takeover three years ago, sees the chief of one of its two divisions upped to group-wide CEO

• EMI is bringing both its EMI Music Publishing and its EMI Recorded Music divisions under the leadership of Roger Faxon, who has led the former unit since 2007 but who is being given an overarching role.

ACTA

=> ↺ Agenda For Round Nine of ACTA Talks Posted

• The agenda for the ninth round of ACTA talks scheduled for Lucerne, Switzerland from June 28 – July 1st. All the major issues – civil enforcement, criminal provisions, Internet issues, and border measures – are on the agenda. The agenda includes two elements that suggest considerable progress has been made. First, the morning of the first day is devoted to a report on “intersessional work.” This confirms rumours that there have been considerable negotiations (and progress) since New Zealand. Second, the international cooperation chapter makes the agenda for the first time.

Clip of the DayMarc Welz: CLUG Talk – 26 August 2008 – DNS (2008) 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

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