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● 06.22.10

● Links 22/6/2010: Dell in GNU/Linux Talks, Loads of Red Hat Press

Posted in News Roundup at 1:58 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

=> ↺ You Want Linux to Run What?

• Someone left a comment on one of my posts similar to, “Linux won’t be popular on the Desktop until it runs Windows applications.” To which I silently responded, “Huh? and, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” We have WINE for running Windows applications and it works reasonably well for those who care to spend the time to work through any problems with it. I don’t think the Linux Community needs to spend time on such an undertaking. Is anyone asking Apple to run Windows applications so that it will gain popularity? No? Then, why should Linux? If you want to run Windows applications, run them on Windows.

=> ↺ And now, for something totally different: EveryDesk!

• Now that most of our work for FLOSSMETRICS is ended, I had the opportunity to try and work on something different. As you know, I worked on bringing OSS to companies and public administration for nearly 15 years now, and I had the opportunity to work in many different projects with many different and incredible people. One of the common things that I discovered is that to increase adoption it is necessary to give every user a distinct advantage in using OSS, and to make the exploratory process easy and hassle-free.

Dell

=> ↺ Dell backtracks on Linux being safer than Windows

• So why did Dell back down from their claims for Ubuntu Linux. I’m not getting any answers from Dell, but I think it’s pretty easy to guess: Microsoft took note of people talking about Dell saying nice things about Linux, and decided to “have a word” with Dell. Microsoft has been pushing the computer vendors around for decades — which is why Windows is so popular, not because Windows is better than the alternatives.

• But, and this is what I find really interesting, Dell didn’t pull the comments about Linux being more secure. They just softened them. I think this speaks volumes. It means that Dell remains committed to Ubuntu Linux on its laptops and netbooks. It also means that Microsoft can’t get away with being the bully it once was to computer manufacturers.

=> ↺ Dell and M$, Sitting in a Tree, KISSING

Google

=> ↺ Dell in talks with Google over Chrome OS

• “We have to have a point of view on the industry and technology direction two years, three years down the road, so we continuously work with Google on this,” Amit Midha, Dell’s president for Greater China and South Asia told Reuters in an interview.

• “There are going to be unique innovations coming up in the marketplace in two, three years, with a new form of computing, we want to be on that forefront … So with Chrome or Android or anything like that we want to be one of the leaders,” Midha said, adding that there were no firm announcements to be made but talks were underway.

=> ↺ Toshiba AC100 video demo

• ITS BORING NAME ASIDE, Toshiba’s AC100 “mobile Internet device,” as the company calls it, runs Android 2.1 and has an Nvidia Tegra 250 processor, a 1024 x 600 screen and 512MB of RAM. Boasting 7-day standby with split second bootup, its battery life for “full use”, which includes 3G internet access, can last for 8 hours according to Toshiba. 3G is optional while WiFi comes as standard.

Server

=> ↺ What Is I.B.M.’s Watson?

• This is the quintessential sort of clue you hear on the TV game show “Jeopardy!” It’s witty (the clue’s category is “Postcards From the Edge”), demands a large store of trivia and requires contestants to make confident, split-second decisions. This particular clue appeared in a mock version of the game in December, held in Hawthorne, N.Y. at one of I.B.M.’s research labs. Two contestants — Dorothy Gilmartin, a health teacher with her hair tied back in a ponytail, and Alison Kolani, a copy editor — furrowed their brows in concentration. Who would be the first to answer?

Ballnux

=> ↺ Samsung posts firmware source bundle for BD-C5500 Blu Ray player, some wonder if it is real…

• So Samsung finally posted the source code that they were legally obligated to provide me in order to fulfill the contract they entered into with me as a recipient of GPL’d source code that they distributed. Maybe.

• [...]

• If nobody calls companies to account when they have not lived up to their side of the agreement, they’ll get the idea that it’s OK to continue ignoring their obligations, so with all due deference to Mr. Kuhn, I feel it is my right to demand that the contract between myself and Samsung be fulfilled.

• One last thing, and this is for Samsung:

• Quit asking people why they want the code, or what they’re going to do with it. It’s none of your damned business if all the customer does is print it all out and use it for toilet paper, you’re still legally obligated to fork it over.

=> ↺ Augmented reality in openSUSE 11.2

Applications

=> ↺ WYSIWYG music app makes a score

• Musical inspiration may come from heaven, but once it arrives, you’d better record it or it’ll fly back to where it came from. MuseScore software lets you set down your music notation and compose (or at least create sheet music) on your computer.

=> ↺ Linux Odyssey 2010 – Logging Software

• With the ARRL Field Day just around the corner, I decided, in the spirit of my own Linux Odyssey that I should find and use a new logging program. It is the search for this program that prompted these thoughts.

Instructionals

=> ↺ Linuxables: Intro to Linux Command Line

=> ↺ Blender 2.49 Scripting

=> ↺ Two tips for meeting survival in an entrenched bureaucracy

=> ↺ Prevent brute force attacks using fail2ban

=> ↺ How to install webmin in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

=> ↺ noCD? |boot from usb| Sabayon Linux

=> ↺ How to Hide Desktop Icons in Ubuntu

=> ↺ Guake: Hide-able terminal goodness

=> ↺ Guide to dual-booting

=> ↺ 6 Bash Conditional Expression Examples ( -e, -eq, -z, !=, [, [[ ..)

=> ↺ 4 Bash If Statement Examples ( If then fi, If then else fi, If elif else fi, Nested if )

=> ↺ Getting rid of the blanks in a spreadsheet column or row, and more

=> ↺ GRUB 2 boot problems

Games

=> ↺ Cute Knight Kingdom For GNU/Linux Released !

• Today Cute Knight Kingdom came out of beta and is now available for GNU/Linux !

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

=> ↺ KDE 4.5 2nd Beta: The End of an Era

Krita

=> ↺ Last Week in Krita — Week 24

• Last week, Krita development really picked up, and if today’s commit rate is anything to go buy, this week will be just as good! We had fifty commits in week 24. Our bug count is now 58, but that’s after Sven Langkamp closed half a dozen bugs today. People seem to like Krita 2.2 and do very nice work with it. If you give 2.2 a try and you experience a problem, please inform us about it. There’s a very cool and handy Report Bug menu option in the Help menu!

=> ↺ Week 24: Photoshop brush support in Krita

• Equally easy to overlook are improvements like the drag and drop support for tabs in the Dolphin file manager, the use of the semantic desktop features in creating Konqueror bookmarks, or the support in Kontact for alternate calendars and new holiday listings.

Distributions

=> ↺ The Reg guide to Linux, part 1: Picking a distro

• Debian is the daddy, the basis for Ubuntu, Mepis and others. It’s intentionally restricted to only open-source components, so it’s a bit more work to get proprietary code such as graphics or wireless network drivers working, or the official versions of Java, Flash and so on. Good for servers if you know what you’re doing, but not a great desktop choice unless you’re already a guru.

=> ↺ 8 Linux-based Live CD/DVD and USB Distros For All Occasions

• If you’re new to the Linux or open source community, you might not have heard of live disc or USB distributions yet. They let you run a operating system on PCs without installing anything on the hard drive. It loads directly from the CD/DVD disc or USB flash drive. Many full Linux desktop distros, such as Ubuntu, can be ran in this live mode. However, there are also live distros created for a wide-variety of other specific applications and solutions. Here we’ll review several of these. Let’s get started!

Reviews

=> ↺ Review – Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Netbook Remix – With Screenshots

• Ubuntu Netbook Remix, or UNR, sports the same purple theme that the Gnome Ubuntu release has. There is only a toolbar at the top, and then the Netbook Interface. Different to Gnome-Shell, which I spent some time with over the past seven days, I have none of that feeling of “where do I go now” that Gnome-Shell leaves me with.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ SAS ranks No. 6 in Computerworld ‘Best Places to Work’ list; Red Hat is 95th

=> ↺ SAS, Red Hat among 100 best places to work in IT

• Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) is the only other Triangle technology company to make the list, ranking at No. 95. The Raleigh open-source software company had IT turnover of just 5 percent in 2009 and maintained a $1,250 training budget per IT employee.

=> ↺ Hanging Our Hats at One of the Best Companies to Work

=> ↺ AcrossWorld eyes global access to free college courses

• Across Fort Point Channel is AcrossWorld Education Co. Inc., which launched last year to bring freely available college-level courses to developing communities across the globe. To do so, it is hoping to emulate the success of another company that has been a big winner in monetizing free content — Red Hat Inc.

• Unlike Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), which took the open source operating system Linux and turned it into an enterprise-level software player, AcrossWorld is tapping the courses available through the open education resources movement for its business model. Like Red Hat, however, AcrossWorld will be making its money by selling expertise. For AcrossWorld, that means helping collect and structure courses for colleges that otherwise would have to invest major funds in developing their own curricula.

=> ↺ NYSE Euronext Fuels Performance, Integration and Cost Savings With Red Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Middleware

• Prompted by their positive collaboration and customer experience as a long-time Red Hat Enterprise Linux customer, NYSE Euronext turned to JBoss Enterprise Middleware to integrate their disparate and legacy proprietary infrastructure.

=> ↺ Nyse Euronext taps Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Middleware

• Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Nyse Euronext (NYX), the leading and most liquid equities exchange group in the world, has standardized on Red Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

=> ↺ Red Hat Looking At Systems Management Market?

=> ↺ Red Hat Recognizes 2010 Red Hat Certified Engineers of the Year

=> ↺ Red Hat Enables and Empowers Global Business Partners with Center for Resources on Cloud, Virtualization and Middleware Computing

=> ↺ Red Hat Ahead of Earnings

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ New Post-Release Repository For New Applications Starting With Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

• But Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat wants to change the game: according to the whiteboard of the “Implementation of delivering apps post-release” blueprint, a new Ubuntu repository “extras.ubuntu.com” will be created and new applications will be uploaded to this repository even for the already released Ubuntu versions. The new applications will have to be approved by the Application Review Board.

=> ↺ The Spirit of Ubuntu

• My father-in-law Ron is 88 years old, a member of what Tom Brokaw called The Greatest Generation, those who survived the Great Depression and went on to fight World War II — in Europe, in Ron’s case. Time is taking its toll now on all of those folks: limited mobility, slower reaction times, often reduced vision. It can happen to all of us who live that long.

• [...]

• I sent copies of my articles to Ron from time to time. He had been interested in computer hardware some years ago and had accumulated a good many bits and pieces, but had long since given it away; unfortunately, a lot of his enthusiasm had gone with it. Still, he always read the articles and a few months ago he remarked that Linux sounded interesting. Naturally I jumped at the opening, offered to send him a Live CD, and to my surprise he said he’d love to try it. I sent him Ubuntu 9.04, a short summary of it, and references to the Ubuntu sites on the web.

=> ↺ Meet Steve Kowalik

=> ↺ Ubuntu on TV: The IT Crowd

• You can clearly see an Ubuntu logo on the the back of one of the characters’ monitor from Channel 4’s geek comedy ‘The IT Crowd’ (which has just started a new series o’er here.)

Mint

=> ↺ Isadora KDE Development Report

• After using the new Mint Community website for testing, with some new tests too, the last development ISO still had some minor bugs. Two were easy to fix, but the other two KDE ones have been a real pain. Well lets say they are very easy for a user to configure using system settings if you know where to look but to have them enabled by default is…. well… I gave up. KDE 4.4 now has new ways to generate the configs it wants after putting your configs there first.

Devices/Embedded

E-Readers

=> ↺ Kindle vs. Nook: The price war is on; E-reader shipments to surge?

• The price war in e-readers is on and the scrum between Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook may be enough to change the buying calculus for dedicated reading devices.

=> ↺ Dedicated E-Readers: They’re History

• Barnes & Noble just launched a new Wi-Fi only version of the Nook for $149 and cut the price of the original, with both Wi-Fi and 3G from $259 to $199. Whoops! And, what’s this? I no sooner finish this blog and Amazon drops the bottom-line Kindle’s price to $189. That’s great, right? Wrong. It’s actually just postponing the end of all dedicated e-readers.

• [...]

• Besides, in the next few months you’re going to see a flood of Linux-powered iPad clones and other tablet devices. I expect these tablets to have prices ranging from $150 to $250 and, thanks to most of them running Google Android, they’ll be able to run many of the same applications that now live on Apple iPads. Besides, when it comes to e-readers, the Nook is an Android Linux device and there’s already a Kindle for Android application.

Free Software/Open Source

VLC

=> ↺ VLC 1.1 Forced To Drop Shoutcast Due To AOL Anti-OSS Provision

=> ↺ Press Release about Shoutcast Removal in VLC

• During the last year, the VLC developers have received several injunctions by e-mail from employees at AOL, asking us to either comply to a license not compatible with free software or remove the SHOUTcast capability in VLC.

=> ↺ AOL sucks, forces VLC to remove SHOUTCast, AOL sucks…hard.

Mozilla

=> ↺ Firefox 4 gets web sockets support

• Recent Firefox 4 nightlies feature new support for Web Sockets, a new technology (an HTML5 spin-off) that enables bi-directional communication between a web browser and a server.

SaaS

=> ↺ Linux: “The Cloud”, Tablets, Desktop PCs and Control

• On the other hand, the tablet PC systems I see so far are limited to control by some folks other than myself. You see, for now these are closed consumer devices that do not allow me to install or choose my own operating system and only work best when connected to “the cloud”. The tablets by Apple come with all the restrictions that come with any Apple system, only worse in this case. The tablets from Google are at least supposed to use an open source operating system. But still, Google’s dedication to “cloud computing” puts their tablet in a questionable light as far as control over “my stuff” is concerned. At least with a laptop, notebook or netbook PC I can still have a local disk installed with my operating system of choice, a complete set of productivity applications installed and full control over my own data. No access to the ‘net? That is no problem with a device with local storage where I can keep my data and work on it with locally installed applications.

=> ↺ Confessions of a cloud skeptic

Oracle

=> ↺ OpenOffice at the crossroads

• OpenOffice.org is a flagship for free and open source software, released under free software licenses and achieving downloads in the hundreds of millions. OO.o is a success by most measurements, but there have long been murmurings of discontent among developers resulting in complaints of “non-responsiveness and lack of leadership” on the project. The argument is not that the project is a failure, but that OpenOffice.org could be so much more, given a less top down approach to project management and a looser rein on developers’ ability to get involved.

Business

=> ↺ Can a FOSS Firm Hit the Billion-Dollar Jackpot?

• In any discussion of FOSS’s potential to be profitable, Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) is invariably held up as the poster child for success.

=> ↺ The Economics of Open Source: Why the Billion Dollar Barrier is Irrelevant

• The explanation of why zero pure play open source vendors have hit the one billion dollar revenue mark has never seemed, to me, particularly complicated. The economics of open source are, as Glyn notes above, fundamentally differentiated from the closed source models that preceded it. Open source as an application development model enjoys many advantages over proprietary, in-house development; distribution and usage among them. But revenue extraction has not traditionally been a strength, for obvious reasons. When payment is optional, as it is with most open source software, fewer users become commercial buyers. Next up, a study proving that objects further away are harder to see.

=> ↺ Opscode, Turning Sysadmins into Superheroes

BSD

=> ↺ Dru Lavigne Appointed “Director of Community Development” for PC-BSD Project

• Dru Lavigne currently serves on the Board of Directors for the FreeBSD Foundation and is the current Chair of the BSD Certification Group. As of August 2nd, she will be adding Director of Community Development for the PC-BSD project to her resume.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ Introducing the campaigns interns…

Open Data

=> ↺ Open Geoprocessing Standards and Open Geospatial Data

• The following guest post is from Lance McKee, who is Senior Staff Writer at the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Geospatial Data.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Why engineers don’t like Twitter

• Twitter is one of the most popular social networking tools around today. But of the 50 million+ “Tweets” broadcast daily (according to Twitter), not all that many are being sent or received by engineers, many of whom say they just aren’t buying into the micro-blogging service based on “140-characters or less” text messages.

=> ↺ Ex-Massey Miner: Safety Gripes Led To Firing

• A former Massey Energy coal miner has filed a federal whistle-blower complaint, claiming he was fired after complaining about unsafe conditions at two Massey mines in West Virginia, NPR News has learned. One of the coal mines is Upper Big Branch, where an explosion killed 29 workers April 5.

• Ricky Lee Campbell’s complaint says he repeatedly told his supervisors about failing brakes on the coal shuttle cars he drove at the Slip Ridge Cedar Grove mine.

=> ↺ New “atomic” server: 512 Atom CPUs take on Xeons

• When Intel first unveiled its “Silverthorne” microarchitecture in 2008, it was clear that the low-power, in-order processors based on it (i.e., Atom) would be at the very bottom of the performance heap. It’s fair to say that none of us in the tech press ever expected to see a server based on the design, much less one that would be aimed directly at Intel’s high-end Xeon line. But we weren’t the only ones watching the Silverthorne announcement.

=> ↺ Metro Goes On Making Profits

• According to Steve Auckland, Metro UK’s managing director, the paper made an operating profit even during the worst of the recession in 2009, its seventh successive year of profitability.

=> ↺ Why Mobile Innovation Is Blowing Away PCs

• The competitive interplay between Apple and Google will continue to help smartphone software outpace PCs. But iOS and Android also benefit wildly from the structure of the smartphone industry. Apple and Google are pushed not just by each other, but by the symbiotic advancement in chipsets and the system integration work of component vendors that I detailed above. The entire smartphone innovation value-chain just works.

BCS

=> ↺ BCS trustee threatens rebels with libel action

• Rebel members of the BCS have been threatened with libel action unless they withdraw claims that appear to question the probity of the organisation’s Trustees.

• The BCS is the midst of £5m ‘transformation’ programme that includes re-branding to “BCS: the Chartered Institute for IT”. Such moves have not gone down well with some members.

=> ↺ ✍ BCS Members: Vote Now

Science

=> ↺ Boost to next generation human genetic research

• The 1000 Genomes Project, an international public-private consortium to build the most detailed map of human genetic variation to date, has completed three pilot projects and announced the deposition of the final resulting data in freely available public databases for use by the research community.

=> ↺ EU sees solar power imported from Sahara in five years

• Europe will import its first solar-generated electricity from North Africa within the next five years, European Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger said in an interview on Sunday.

=> ↺ Music of the sun recorded by scientists

• Astronomers at the University of Sheffield have managed to record for the first time the eerie musical harmonies produced by the magnetic field in the outer atmosphere of the sun.

=> ↺ Lucy fossil gets jolted upright by Big Man

Security/Aggression

=> ↺ Napolitano: US must balance liberties, security

• Fighting homegrown terrorism by monitoring Internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security, the nation’s homeland security chief said Friday.

=> ↺ London Borough sees a way of making some easy green

• Mr Mayes story is a perfect example of how our power-hungry society has become one ruled by bureaucratisation and rationalisation. How a council warden can think a few plants could represent flytipping is quite ridiculous and shows how the state is obsessed by the tiny details instead of seeing the bigger picture.

=> ↺ Government plans new model for Summary Care Record

• Exclusive: The Government is planning to switch to a scaled back, ‘patient-held’ electronic care record, severing central control over the controversial programme, but stopping short of scrapping it altogether.

=> ↺ Budget 2010: Forget being tough, it’s time to get realistic on crime

• Who spends the money? Politicians. Do they always spend as wisely as they know how? Not at all. In many fields politicians of all parties conspire to spend wilfully, knowing full well that they are wasting considerable sums that will do no good to anyone. They hope they are at least buying votes, but there is little evidence that their profligacy even succeeds in this. Law and order and drugs prohibition are just two of many examples where pursuit of populism trumps spending money well.

Environment

=> ↺ NASA: Easily the hottest spring — and Jan-May — in temperature record

=> ↺ Debunking the myth of the internet as energy hog, again: How information technology is good for climate

• That’s the start of a guest post from Dr. Jonathan Koomey, a project scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Koomey has been a friend and colleague for more than a decade and a half — and we’ve spent a lot of time debunking mis-analysis in this area (see “Ignore the media hype and keep Googling — The energy impact of web searches is very LOW“).

=> ↺ Whistleblower aims to expose dark side of Japanese whaling

• Now, as Japan pushes to overturn the 24-year ban on commercial whaling, the former whaler has come forward with allegations of widespread criminality among the men with whom he spent months in the freezing waters of the Antarctic.

=> ↺ Why anti-whaling campaigners are the bluefin tuna’s last hope

=> ↺ Sea Shepherd activists free hundreds of threatened bluefin tuna off Libya

=> ↺ Lessons from 9/11 for the Gulf oil spill

=> ↺ BP AND THE AXIS OF EVIL

• BP is accused of destroying the wildlife and coastline of America, but if you look back into history you find that BP did something even worse to America.

• They gave the world Ayatollah Khomeini.

• Of course there are many factors that led to the Iranian revolution, but back in 1951 the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company – which would later become BP – and its principal owner the British government, conspired to destroy democracy and install a western-controlled regime in Iran. The resulting anger and the repression that followed was one of the principal causes of the Iranian revolution in 1978/79 – out of which came the Islamist regime of Ayatollah Khomeini.

=> ↺ BP’s British shareholders to join US class actions over oil spill

=> ↺ BP Disaster: Put the oil spill birds out of their misery

• Tony Hayward, the tactless shithead CEO of BP might “like his life back,” but what about the 99% of the birds caught up in the oil spill catastrophe who will inevitably die from suffocation and liver and kidney damage?

=> ↺ Gulf oil spill: A hole in the world

• ‘Obama cannot order pelicans not to die (no matter whose ass he kicks). And no amount of money – not BP’s $20bn, not $100bn – can replace a culture that’s lost its roots.’

=> ↺ Buncefield fire: Oil storage firm found guilty of safety breaches

• A company controlled by Total and Chevron has been found guilty of host of grave safety failures that led to the Buncefield oil depot explosion and the largest fire in peacetime Europe.

=> ↺ Gulf paymaster: People are in ‘desperate’ shape

• The man President Barack Obama picked to run the $20 billion Gulf oil spill damage fund said Monday many people are in “desperate financial straits” and need immediate relief.

Finance

=> ↺ Goldman’s Blankfein Suddenly Looks Good, Thanks to BP’s Hayward

• Watching BP (BP) CEO Tony Hayward mundanely evade responsibility for the historic ecological disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico may have angered members of Congress and television viewers alike. And split screen images of the underwater well continuing to gush vast quantities of oil as Hayward demonstrated little emotion or sense of urgency only heightened the irritation.

=> ↺ Goldman Sachs, AIG to Testify at Derivatives Hearing

• Representatives of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and American International Group Inc. will appear before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission as the panel holds a hearing on the role of derivatives in the credit crunch.

=> ↺ Gardy & Notis, LLP Files a Class Action Lawsuit on Behalf of All Purchasers of Shares of Common Stock of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — GS

• The class action seeks to recover damages on behalf of plaintiff and a class of all other individual and institutional investors who purchased or otherwise acquired shares of Goldman Sachs common stock during the class period. The defendants in the case are The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Lloyd C. Blankfein, David A. Viniar and Gary D. Cohn. The complaint alleges that defendants violated Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by issuing a series of materially false and misleading statements concerning Goldman Sachs’ business model and reasons for Goldman Sachs’ business success during the class period.

=> ↺ Goldman Sachs, SEC, Agree to Extend Goldman’s Reply

• A judge today in New York signed an order granting Goldman Sachs Group Inc. more time to respond to a April 16 lawsuit accusing the firm of defrauding investors while selling mortgage-linked securities, records say.

=> ↺ Weber Defies Trichet Over Europe Bond Bailout as ECB Succession Approaches

• On May 10, just hours after the European Central Bank stepped into government bond markets for the first time, Axel Weber broke ranks with most of his colleagues on the ECB’s Governing Council — including his boss, President Jean-Claude Trichet.

=> ↺ Business Rallies to Shape Finance Endgame

• For a year, users have been fighting furiously to fend off changes in how the securities are bought and sold, and have had considerable success in the House. Then, this spring the tide turned against them in the Senate. Now, with a bloc of business-friendly Democrats pressing hard, the issue has exploded into one of the biggest battles as a House-Senate conference crafts the final version of a financial-regulation overhaul.

=> ↺ Lawmakers to tackle toughest issues remaining on Wall Street reform

=> ↺ Bank Lobbyists Make a Run at Reform Measures

• As Congress rushes this week to complete the most far-reaching financial reform plan in decades, the banking industry is mounting an 11th-hour end run.

=> ↺ Wall Street Reform Could Cost Goldman Sachs BILLIONS

• The proposed financial reforms pending before Congress could cost Goldman Sachs nearly a quarter of its annual profits, Citigroup analysts estimate in a new report.

=> ↺ Wall Street reform singes, not burns

• New York lawmakers say the changes could cripple an industry that’s the state’s lifeblood.

=> ↺ Dead On Arrival: Financial Reform Fails

• There is great deference to power in the United States, and perhaps that is appropriate. But those now calling the shots should remember that they will not be in power for ever and – at some point in the not too distant future – there will be a more balanced assessment of their legacies.

=> ↺ The Undeserving Unemployed

• Long-term unemployment, a jobless period of six months or longer, has reached a historic high. In March 2010 more than 44 percent of the unemployed fell into this category.

=> ↺ Bank-closure workload leads FDIC to open 3rd satellite office

• The FDIC has closed nearly 250 banks since the beginning of 2008, and the number of failures is expected to peak during the third quarter of this year. Cleaning up such financial wreckage has depleted the agency’s deposit insurance fund, which goes toward putting seized banks into receivership and backstopping individual accounts of up to $250,000.

=> ↺ Saudi gold reserves over twice previous estimate

• Saudi Arabia’s central bank holds more than twice the amount of gold previously estimated, a shift that analysts said reflected more of an accounting adjustment than an indication the oil rich nation was veering away from its conservative reserve policy.

=> ↺ Former Soviet Republic of Georgia To Become IT Tax Haven

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

=> ↺ If Your Brother Was Arrested For A Crime, Does It Violate Your Privacy When They Store His DNA?

• Well, here’s an interesting privacy conundrum. In the US, if you are arrested, the government records your DNA in a giant database. There is already some controversy over the fact that it’s upon arrest, and not conviction, but the privacy issues appear to go much deeper. Slate is running a fascinating article about how there are some serious privacy questions raised by law enforcement using that DNA database to track down relatives of people in the database.

=> ↺ WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange breaks cover but will avoid America

• The elusive founder of WikiLeaks, who is at the centre of a potential US national security sensation, has surfaced from almost a month in hiding to tell the Guardian he does not fear for his safety but is on permanent alert.

• Julian Assange, a renowned Australian hacker who founded the electronic whistleblowers’ platform WikiLeaks, vanished when a young US intelligence analyst in Baghdad was arrested.

• The analyst, Bradley Manning, had bragged he had sent 260,000 incendiary US state department cables on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks.

• The prospect of the cache of classified intelligence on the US conduct of the two wars being put online is a nightmare for Washington. The sensitivity of the information has generated media reports that Assange is the target of a US manhunt.

=> ↺ With Rumored Manhunt for Wikileaks Founder and Arrest of Alleged Leaker of Video Showing Iraq Killings, Obama Admin Escalates Crackdown on Whistleblowers of Classified Information

=> ↺ IFJ condemns jailing of Venezuela journalist

• The International Federation of Journalists has condemned the jail sentence and fine handed out to Venezuelan columnist Francisco Perez.

• “It is a brutal, unacceptable judgment with very few international precedents,” said the Brussels-based body that represents around 600,000 journalists in more than 100 countries.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

=> ↺ BBC Trust Consultation: On-demand Syndication

• As I wrote in my submission using the online survey, it would be far better if the BBC simply released the iPlayer code as open source, and allowed companies and people to support the platforms they are interested in. This would save money and enable a far greater range of devices to be supported. I also recommended allowing the atomisation of content, rather than forcing people to watch pre-defined channels – in other words, in the way we consume content online.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Supreme Court’s ruling on Monsanto’s GM alfalfa

• 1.Supreme Court Ruling in Monsanto Case is Victory for Center for Food Safety, Farmers 2.Supreme Court’s Ruling on Monsanto’s GM Alfalfa: Who Won?

Meat

=> ↺ Pork Board takes bite out of Unicorn Meat spoof

=> ↺ National Pork Board thinks Canned Unicorn Meat is real

• The super-genius legal-beagles at the National Pork Board have done their duty: they caught ThinkGeek advertising their “Canned Unicorn Meat” (an April Fool’s gag product) using the Solemnly Registered Trademark “The Other White Meat Circle-R,” so they sent them a 12-page cease-and-desist letter.

=> ↺ ThinkGeek gets awesome cease-and-desist order for Unicorn Meat

=> ↺ ThinkGeek’s Best Ever Cease-and-Desist Letter

Copyrights

=> ↺ File-sharing has weakened copyright—and helped society

• Has file-sharing helped society? Looked at from the narrow perspective of existing record labels, the question must seem absurd; profits have dropped sharply in the years since tools like Napster first appeared. But a pair of well-known academics argue peer-to-peer file sharing has weakened copyright in the US… and managed to benefit all of us at the same time.

• “Consumer welfare increased substantially due to new technology,” write Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard and Koleman Strumpf of the University of Kansas. “Weaker copyright protection, it seems, has benefited society.”

=> ↺ Copyright Ratchet, Copyright Racket

• An anti-trust exemption that would allow newspaper to operate as a cartel in the public interest. George Orwell would have loved it.

=> ↺ Director Furious As Lawmakers Watch Pirate Copy of Hit Movie

• A movie director in India is threatening legal action against lawmakers after it was revealed they gathered and watched a pirate copy of his hit movie. The film, titled ‘Raajneeti’ (‘Politics’), was released early this month in theaters but dozens of lawmakers from the Indian Bharatiya Janata Party didn’t visit one. They were caught after their illicit screening was broadcast on TV as part of a news report.

=> ↺ Britain’s BPI goes after Google

• The BPI, the RIAA’s UK counterpart, has gone up against the Holiest of Holies, American online advertising conglomerate Google, says Chilling Effects.

• Short for British Phonographic Industry, the BPI contributed to the British government’s Digital Ecomy bill, complete with its ACTA Three Strikes and you’re Off The Net element, with hardly a murmur from the UK lamescream media.

=> ↺ Well This Is Funny…

• With that in mind, I had to chuckle to myself when I read the news that the producer of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” has started shooting the project with a mere $5-million budget and a crew that likely ensures a quiet direct-to-video release (if that).

• [...]

• The producer was forced to rush this thing into production now – otherwise he would lose the rights altogether after tying them up for nearly 20 years.

=> ↺ Major Labels Begin Major Astroturfing Campaign To Get 3 Strikes In The US

• A friend just forwarded me an email “from” the CEO of Universal Music (really from an email marketing campaign system if you look at the headers) that encourages him to push for new laws in the US to kick people offline for file sharing. To date, the RIAA and others in the recording industry have known better than to seriously push for a three strikes-type legislation in the US, knowing that it is a battle that they very well might lose. They had hoped, quite strongly, that various ISPs would come to simply agree to implement a three strikes plan to kick people offline after three accusations (not convictions) of copyright infringement. But it’s been nearly a year and a half since the RIAA believed those deals were close, and there’s still nothing to show for it. Nothing.

• So, it looks like the industry is going to plan B: which is going back to trying to ram through legislation that will require ISPs to take the draconian step of protecting one industry’s broken business model. And to get this going, it looks like the industry has set up a neat little set of astroturfing groups and “consumer” campaigns that try to hide the specifics, but clearly are designed to get similar three strikes legislation (similar to the Digital Economy Act in the UK) put in place in the US.

ACTA

=> ↺ International Experts Find that Pending Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement Threatens Public Interests

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