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● 01.25.11

● Links 25/1/2011: Red Hat Expansion and LCA 2011 Coverage

Posted in News Roundup at 4:41 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ Linux Skills Are Hot on Improving IT Hiring Front

• That’s according to global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which on Monday reported that employers announced plans to cut only 46,825 IT jobs during 2010–a full 73 percent fewer than the 174,629 technology job cuts in 2009.

=> ↺ Certifiable: Why Get a Vendor/Distribution Neutral Linux Certification?

• In this second in his series of online videos, Ross Brunson of LPICPrep describes the value of a vendor and distribution neutral Linux certification.

Desktop

=> ↺ IBM rolls out virtual desktop offering

• The VDI package will allow workers to access desktops from a variety of devices, including iPads and thin clients. They could access both Microsoft Windows and Linux-based operating system desktops. Users can even run the desktops without connectivity, by use of a USB drive.

=> ↺ Five seriously cool conky set-ups for the Linux desktop

• It’s seen by some as the stat setup of geeks, but once you move past the desktops filled with blocks of terminal-style output, Conky is capable of transforming your desktop into something pretty special.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ 2011 Linux Predictions | LAS | s15e03

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Intel Core i5 2500K Linux Performance

• Earlier this month Intel released their first “Sandy Bridge” processors to much excitement. However, for Linux users seeking to utilize the next-generation Intel HD graphics found on these new CPUs, it meant problems. Up to this point we have largely been looking at the graphics side of Sandy Bridge, and while we have yet to publish any results there due to some isolated issues, on the CPU side its Linux experience and performance has been nothing short of incredible. Here are the first Linux benchmarks of the Intel Core i5 2500K processor.

=> ↺ Natty to get kernel 2.6.38

• Just a short little update to let the OMG crowd be the first to hear. Andy Whitcroft reported in a bug report that Natty is about to get the 2.6.38 kernel.

=> ↺ AMD Offers OpenGL 4.1 Support On Linux

• The new functionality is made possible with the release of the latest professional and consumer graphics drivers, ATI FirePro and ATI FireGL unified driver 8.801, and AMD CatalystTM 10.12, available on the AMD website.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ NVIDIA 270.18 Linux Beta Driver Is Here

• This morning I talked about a stable NVIDIA Linux driver update (v260.19.36) and that a 270.xx beta driver would be imminent. It turns out, however, that the NVIDIA 270.18 Beta driver is already publicly available. It can be tested for Linux x86/x86_64 with a couple of new features to this proprietary graphics driver.

=> ↺ Cairo 1.12 Is Being Prepped With New Capabilities

• Intel’s Chris Wilson has announced the Cairo 1.11.2 snapshot, which is the first development look at what’s to come with version 1.12 of the Cairo drawing library. Besides introducing support for creating Bezier surface gradients and working up the API in some areas, there’s many other improvements being introduced in Cairo 1.12.

Applications

=> ↺ Touchégg allows you to Assign actions to Multitouch gestures in Linux

• Want a three-finger pinch on your multi-touch trackpad to minimize all windows? Dream of a five-finger tap emulating your mouse scroll-wheel?

=> ↺ Photo Op: Piwigo

=> ↺ Purple: a new Dictionary app from the elementary project

• I doubt that dictionaries are on the top of most peoples ‘must have app’ lists, but the release of the elementary projects lush looking lexicon may just change that…

=> ↺ One Package Manager for them All

• The idea of one universal package format for all distributions has been batted around a few times over the years. One of the most notable was Ryan C. Gordon’s idea of FatELF files. Reactions varied from supportive to skeptical to down right opposed. Well, it seems a new team from major distributions is coming together to implement a “common application installer API and infrastructure.”

=> ↺ giPlayer – A python-gtk wrapper for get_iplayer

• giPlayer is a very simple python gtk gui to download BBC programmes on the Linux OS. With a deb file it should easily work on all debian based versions of Linux including Ubuntu. There is no help but it is fairly straightforward to use. It is a wrapper for get_iplayer. If you wish to understand in more detail how it downloads programmes you can read the command line program get_iplayer help file.

Proprietary

=> ↺ ESET NOD antivirus solution comes to Linux

• And so they have decided it was time to join the few proprietary antivirus solutions for the Linux desktop.

=> ↺ CoreTrace Brings Application Whitelisting to Linux, Mac

• As a result of building Bouncer for Linux, a small part of the program might end up becoming open source.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Be More Productive in Ubuntu Using Keyboard Shortcuts

=> ↺ 4 linux masquerading

=> ↺ How to continue partially downloaded files using wget

=> ↺ Linux Firewall Tutorial: IPTables Tables, Chains, Rules Fundamentals

=> ↺ How to change the language of AWStats statistics on Debian Linux (ISPConfig 3)

=> ↺ How To Enable Two Finger Scrolling In Ubuntu 10.10

=> ↺ Install Xfce And Xfce Goodies On Ubuntu 10.10

=> ↺ Getting rid off Catalyst

=> ↺ Why ‘export’ if i could just direct assign the variables in bash?

=> ↺ Puddletag – A Powerful Mp3 tag editor for Ubuntu Linux

=> ↺ Vagrant set up, Part 1

=> ↺ Securing Apache – Part 1

=> ↺ Oxygenise your Apache

=> ↺ Install VLC 1.1.6 In Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat Via PPA

• VLC 1.1.6 was released yesterday, bringing security fixes and many improvements. Here’s the complete VLC 1.1.6 changelog:

• • Security updates in codecs and demuxers * Support for RTP/PCM 24bits, audio/L24 * Faster Webm/VP8 decoding * Major updates in most language translations * KDE and PulseAudio integration improvements * Subtitles fixes and improvements * Improvements in visualisations and interfaces * Codecs updates * Many miscellaneous fixes

Games

=> ↺ Sintel The Game

• But time passed and nothing showed up; the Blender Foundation showed no plans for another official Blender Game Engine project… Until a bunch of unaffiliated Blender artists decided to have a crack at making the project themselves without the official sponsorship of the Foundation, and started the Sintel The Game project (yay Free Culture).

=> ↺ User Days January 29-30 Schedule

• On the weekend of January 29-30th we will be hosting our 3rd Ubuntu User Days event in #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net (#ubuntu-classroom-chat for questions).

=> ↺ Dominions 3: The Awakening 3.26

• Illwinter Game Design released a patch for the turn-based strategy game Dominions 3: The Awakening this week; changes include:

• • Improved performance and window responsiveness during the ‘AI thinking’ host stage. * It was sometimes possible to continue sacrificing slaves even if your temple had burned down. Fixed. * Fixed crash during turn generation. * popkill now works for non-commanders as well. * Command line switch -nonationinfo is now implemented. * Yogini was not a female. Many a date ended with a surprise. Fixed. * Pulseaudio on Linux no longer requires Pulseaudio dev package to be installed. * New modding commands for underwater recruiting. * Modding: Maximum number of spells increased to 2000. * Modding: Maximum number of name types increased to 100. * Many, many more changes, corrections, and additions.

=> ↺ Lutris

• The Universal Gaming Platform For GNU Linux

• Lutris is a gaming platform planning to support as many games as possible for GNU/Linux. It takes care of installing and running the games by setting up the best environment in order to provide the most enjoyable gaming experience.

Desktop Environments

=> ↺ Desktop Environment of the Year

• If you’re looking for Fluxbox, Window Maker, Enlightenment or similar options – they are in the Window Manager of the Year poll.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

=> ↺ New Improved Amarok 2.4 “Slipstream” Released, Install in Ubuntu Maverick, Natty via PPA

• Amarok 2.4 codenamed “Slipstream” was released some days ago. Amarok has evolved a lot over the year and we had followed the Amarok evolution in its each and every step. Now with the release of Amarok 2.4 final, a lot has changed. Here is a quick preview.

=> ↺ Bangarang 2.0 Release Candidate

• I’m happy to announce that the Bangarang 2.0 Release Candidate is now available. It can be downloaded from opendesktop.org. Packagers are welcome to get the source tarball from here.

=> ↺ Amarok Insider – Issue 16

• The Amarok Team is very happy to announce a new edition of our Amarok Insider newsletter. This time, we have really packed it with information, cool insider details, and fun!

=> ↺ digiKam 1.8.0 released…

• digiKam team is proud to announce digiKam 1.8.0 release!

GNOME Desktop

=> ↺ Gnome Shell Daily Build (January 24th, 2011) Video

• As requested by many of our readers, here is a video showing the latest GNOME Shell daily build (as of January 24th, 2011). There have been many changes to Gnome Shell since our last video, including the overview relayout (which is default for some time), notification changes, side-by-side tiling as well a functional notification area and many other changes.

Distributions

=> ↺ Because Your Distro Should Be Cool!

• Reason 4: Small crew: Foresight is formed by a bunch of very, very enthusiastic group that really enjoy developing and maintaining a cool system! That means that we’re small enough to have an almost family-like relationship and all help out in whatever task needs to be done. That also means that we’re most of the time shorthanded and have a lot of things being worked by one single person! Some people may find this to be a hindrance but I like to see it as a great chance to get involved with an open source project! Do you want to maintain a package? Want to impress the world with your artistic skills? Is documentation your thing? There are very few hoops to jump through and you will learn a whole lot about Linux and running a distribution! What can I say, we are a small team that just love what we do!

Reviews

=> ↺ Quick looks at Dragora GNU/Linux, Asturix and Fuduntu

=> ↺ Jolicloud Cloud-Based Linux Desktop Review

• Anyone trying this relative newcomer might call it accessible because it has an extremely easy-to-use interface. Or, it could be called accessible in the sense that it’s free and will run on minimal hardware. Or, it may be accessible because it integrates concepts familiar to social networking users directly into the main interface.

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Red Hat plans expansion for Brisbane office

• Enterprise Linux vendor Red Hat plans to expand its Brisbane support operation, revealing that some US Red Hat customers time support calls according to when calls are likely to be answered by Australian staff.

=> ↺ Red Hat builds gutsy, green virtualization machine

• Three years in the making, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 is a gutsy, green upgrade that features native support for KVM, the Linux kernel-based virtual machine.

=> ↺ LCA 2011: Multiculturalism a major plus for Red Hat

• Multiculturalism may be something that is frowned upon in some parts of Australia but for Red Hat, the premier open source company, it has proved to be a blessing and nothing else.

Fedora

=> ↺ Consistent Network Device Naming coming to Fedora 15

• One of my long-standing pet projects – Consistent Network Device Naming, is finally coming to Fedora (emphasizing the 2 of the Fedora F’s: Features and First), and thereafter, all Linux distributions. What is this, you ask?

• Systems running Linux have long had ethernet network devices named ethX. Your desktop likely has one ethernet port, named eth0. This works fine if you have only one network port, but what if, like on Dell PowerEdge servers, you have four ethernet ports? They are named eth0, eth1, eth2, eth3, corresponding to the labels on the back of the chassis, 1, 2, 3, 4, respectively. Sometimes. Aside from the obvious confusion of names starting at 0 verses starting at 1, other race conditions can happen such that each port may not get the same name on every boot, and they may get named in an arbitrary order. If you add in a network card to a PCI slot, it gets even worse, as the ports on the motherboard and the ports on the add-in card may have their names intermixed.

=> ↺ Breaking a few eggs: Fedora 15 changes network device naming

• The Fedora Project is getting ready to break a lot of networking scripts that depend on the ethX naming convention — by being the first major distro to ship Consistent Network Device Naming.

• Matt Domsch, Fedora contributor and technology strategy in Dell’s office of the CTO, put out a call for testing the new naming scheme this Thursday with a description of the new system. Systems that have a single network device have no problems — one Ethernet port means you have one device name (eth0). But two or more network devices, and the naming is not assured on startup.

=> ↺ Fedora 14 on Lenovo Thinkpad X100e with Athlon Neo MV-40

• I recently read a perspective that buying a “Windows 7 computer” and replacing its OS with GNU/Linux actually hurts our cause. I disagree with the author of that statement for two reasons. One is that wiping out Windows 7 on this machine means that I’m getting out there with a machine that people think of as needing Windows to run, and showing them, at the coffee shop, at the playground, at the library, in the classroom, that GNU/Linux supports every piece of hardware on this brand new machine, even though most manufacturers don’t make it a selling point. Think of how important that is when there are still people saying that when you switch to Linux[sic] you should know that hardware support is virtually nonexistent. That’s bullsht, but people won’t know it’s bullsht if we all used machines cobbled together from spare parts.

=> ↺ Red Hat in Fringe

=> ↺ Fedora: from bleeding edge to bleeding contributors

• As many other problems, this is a design problem, and I am not talking here about graphic design or interaction design, I talk about a higher level design, one that is perhaps the Board’s competence: is the definition of the Fedora purpose and is implemented with policies, peer pressure, the power of example and so on. The problem is: Fedora used to be a distro aimed at advanced users, the ones that are likely, and we want, to contribute back and now is changing into a distro aimed at the Girl Scouts of America. A huge identity crisis, we are tying to become the second Ubuntu and this is not good.

=> ↺ We love stinkin’ badges.

• At FUDCon Tempe, though, we’ve added a little twist. Name badges this time around will feature a QR Code that includes a little bit of contact information for each attendee. This code can be scanned by certain smartphone apps, so if you meet someone and you’d like to keep in contact later, you can scan each other’s badges to make it easier to do so. The excellent suggestion for using a QR Code came from contributor Juan Rodriguez (nushio), and all-around superstar Ian Weller provided the script to create the badges.

Debian Family

=> ↺ The Bizarre Cathedral – 91

=> ↺ Debian is eating its own dog food more than ever

• I completely share the underlying assumption. Eating its own dog food is very important if you want to build a Linux distribution and claim with some confidence that it’s of quality and usable.

=> ↺ Debian derivatives census

• The Debian Project would like to invite representatives of distributions derived from Debian to participate in a census of Debian derivatives. In addition we would like to invite representatives of distributions derived from Debian to join the Debian derivatives front desk. Debian encourages members of derivative distributions to contribute their ideas, patches, bug reports to Debian and to the upstream developers of software included in Debian.

• By participating in the census you will increase the visibility of your derivative within Debian, provide Debian contributors with a contact point and a set of information that will make it easier for them to interact with your distribution. Representatives of distributions derived from Ubuntu are encouraged to get their distribution added to the Ubuntu Derivative Team wiki page.

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Ubuntu One In Your Living Room

• A few months ago, I acquired a PC that has served me well as in my living room. It has Boxee on it, which is a really neat little media center application. Having it as a resource has allowed us to get rid of cable TV entirely, so we’ve been quite happy with it.

• Earlier this week, I thought “I wish I could stream my Ubuntu One music onto this machine.” Enter the Ubuntu One Boxee App.

=> ↺ Discover Ubuntu (Ubuntu Commercial)

=> ↺ London’s Design Museum Recognizes Ubuntu Fonts

• The Ubuntu Project today announced the opening of a new exhibition at London’s Design Museum dedicated to the Ubuntu Font, in collaboration with international typeface designers Dalton Maag.

• Entitled “Shape My Language,” the exhibition will run from January 28 to February 28, 2011. The exhibition marks a significant milestone for the Ubuntu Project’s advance in design and aims to enhance the consumer experience of using open computing platforms, such as Ubuntu.

=> ↺ Some Useful Basics For Newcomers To Ubuntu

• Getting Ubuntu running on your PC is pretty straightforward, and most of its features are fairly obvious if you’ve been used to a graphical user interface like Windows or Mac OS X. Here’s a handful of tips to help you make the transition and find some useful features if you’ve started playing with Ubuntu.

=> ↺ Top 5 Bit Torrent Clients for Ubuntu

• Applications for Ubuntu/Linux are not at all in short supply. But picking the best from the rest is not an easy thing to do. There are a number of really good bit torrent clients for Ubuntu out there. Here we intend feature a collection of 5 really good bit torrent clients for Ubuntu which we think are among the best.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Embraces QT Toolkit: Blurring Linux Development?

• GTK vs QT. Now there’s a fast path to a geeky argument between passionate programmers of all walks of life. Despite this once widely debated divide, Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Ubuntu is about to add QT libraries to the Ubuntu release known as Ubuntu version 11.10.

• According to Shuttleworth, the reasoning behind the inclusion of QT libraries in Ubuntu stems from their perceived “ease of use and integration advantages.” I’ll take his word for it until I can find glaring data to support a decent counter-argument, since I’m not a programmer myself.

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Xubuntu 11.04 To Get A New Default Theme Called Greybird [Screenshots]

• Starting with version 11.04 alpha 2 (to be released on February 3rd), Xubuntu will use a new theme called “Greybird” as the default theme. The GTK theme is inspired by Elementary but there are quite a few differences between Greybird and Elementary.

Devices/Embedded

Phones

Nokia/MeeGo/Maemo

=> ↺ Meego SDK update has Windows XP and Windows 7 support

• While many developers use machines running Linux to code, support for Windows XP and Windows 7 is vital to The Linux Foundation’s attempts to increase the number of developers working on software applications to run on the Linux-based Meego operating system.

Android

=> ↺ Excellent K-9 mail app for Android keeps your messages on a leash

• Google’s conventional e-mail client for Android has always felt like a second-class citizen compared to the company’s GMail application. It has a very limited user interface, lacks basic features like support for moving messages between folders, and isn’t particularly reliable. Google has been slow to address the program’s weaknesses and doesn’t seem to notice most of the complaints.

• Fortunately, there is a good third-party fork called K-9. It’s not particularly pretty, but it’s highly functional and well-maintained. K-9 is based on Google’s original Android mail client and is similarly distributed under the open source Apache license, but it’s got a whole pile of additional features.

=> ↺ Android update study finds HTC, Motorola have best track record

• Google’s Android mobile operating system is being adopted widely by handset makers and network operators, but not all of the vendors are committed to keeping their devices updated. Several Android handset brands have been tarnished by poor update practices and it’s becoming an issue that enthusiasts factor into their buying decisions.

• In a laudable effort to paint a clear picture of the update landscape, ComputerWorld assembled a straightforward statistical comparison of update performance across carriers and handset makers. The study looks solely at the percentage of handsets updated to Android 2.2—the previous version of the operating system—in 2010.

=> ↺ Mobile phone to blast into orbit

• The mobile will run on Google’s Android operating system but the exact model has not yet been disclosed.

=> ↺ Hands on: Dolphin HD browser for Android is swimmingly good

• One of the strengths of Google’s Android mobile operating system is its support for customization. Android enthusiasts can augment the capabilities of their Android device by replacing key components of the platform with superior third-party alternatives.

• There are a growing number of really great third-party home screen implementations and Web browsers that users can install directly from the Android Market. Some of the popular Web browsers include Opera, Skyfire, Firefox, and Dolphin HD. We plan to write up a full comparison at some point in the future, but decided to start by giving you a close look at our favorite: Dolphin HD.

=> ↺ Time for Google to take control of the Android update process

• Android is always a hot topic on the web since it’s grown so big. Unfortunately for Google, a lot of the conversation centers around the pitiful update process that has customers venting frustration at the delays (or lack) of updates for their Android phones. I understand that the update process is complicated and involves too many entities, but Google is ultimately the company that gets kicked in the shins as its brand gets dragged through the mud over the frustrating update situation. That’s reason enough for Google to step in and take control over the Android update process, no matter how many partner feathers get ruffled.

OLPC

=> ↺ Who is to Blame for OLPC Peru’s Failure? An OLPC Intern Viewpoint

• Jeff Patzer, a 2010 OLPC intern in Peru, is publishing an amazing set of posts where he tries to explain why the OLPC Peru “Una Laptop Por Nino” is failing.

Tablets

=> ↺ Nokia MeeGo Tablet Leaked by Mobile Review… As Usual

• After checking out Toshiba’s impressive tablet, the folks of Tablet News uncovered an image of a Nokia MeeGo tablet, that popped up on bugs.meego.com as developers were working on it trying to finalize the OS.

=> ↺ Motorola Xoom Android Tablet: Launch Date and Price

• The ancipated Android Tablet, Motorola Xoom is expected to arrive soon. Price and Launch date of Xoom has been revealed from Motorola. The Xoom Android tablet from Motorola sports a 10.1 inch touchscreen display with 1,280×800 high screen resolution.

=> ↺ Nokia MeeGo tablet leaks: Prototype or dev-device?

• What looks to be a prototype Nokia tablet running MeeGo has surfaced, though it’s unclear whether it’s an authentic slate, an oversized smartphone or merely a development device for the Intel/Nokia collaborative platform itself.

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Another RockStar at ForgeRock

• It’s already stimulated a great deal of interest and we already have a number of customers for it. We realised it needs a great engineer to act as ForgeRock’s lead architect for OpenIDM. So I am delighted to say that, starting today, Andreas Egloff is joining ForgeRock as Chief Architect, OpenIDM.

=> ↺ Will it Blend? A Look at Blender’s New User Interface

• The 3D powerhouse Blender is arguably the most complicated piece of desktop software in the open source world. It handles every part of the workflow used to create a CGI film or a 3D game: creating objects, rigging them to move, animating them, controlling lighting, rendering scenes, and even editing the resulting video. Each release packs in more new features than most people can understand without consulting a textbook (or two). One of the down sides, though, is that over the years Blender has developed the reputation of being difficult to learn. Fortunately, the latest release takes on that challenge head-first, and makes some major improvements.

=> ↺ Open Source Isn’t Necessarily Free From Bit Rot

• One of the much-discussed advantages of open source software is that it should make it easier for future generations to access data. But in his keynote address at Linux.conf.au in Brisbane, “father of the Internet” Vint Cerf noted that even open source systems weren’t completely free from the challenge of data being created that might not be accessible to future software, a problem he refers to as “bit rot”.

=> ↺ Reduce ongoing costs, increase flexibility with open source software

• In an age where computers have become not a luxury or even a necessity, but an integral part of modern business, software has become the cornerstone of commerce. However, proprietary software can eat into organisations’ ICT budgets, with a hefty purchase price and often annual licensing fees that can further drain resources.

• In addition to this, because of the prevalence of technology within organisations, there are often many third party tools. Integrating these with proprietary software can cause issues to crop up within all of the tools, not to mention the costs associated with application integration.

=> ↺ Request your limited edition opensource.com anniversary t-shirt today

Events

=> ↺ Switches rescued from floods for Linux.conf.au

• Relocated Brisbane conference faced major tech challenge.

• Annual Linux conference Linux.conf.au has kicked off at a quickly-located alternative venue in Brisbane, but only after a bout of last-minute organisation which included having to rescue networking equipment from a flooded retailer.

=> ↺ Floods can’t dampen Linux.conf.au mood

• Nothing can dampen the spirit surrounding this year’s Linux.conf.au in Brisbane, not even a flood crisis, as it officially kicked off in the state’s soggy capital today.

=> ↺ Robots running on Linux compete in RoboCup [#LCA2011]

=> ↺ Google’s VP Vint Cerf #lca2011 keynote [Live blog]

=> ↺ Day one of #LCA2011 in photos (Gallery)

=> ↺ #LCA2011 – Thinking of starting a small business? Check out these principles

=> ↺ #LCA2011 – How does one create a sustainable open source business?

=> ↺ LCA2011 – Picked up in a Linux car? You betcha.

=> ↺ Linux.conf.au 2011 – Day One

• This week more than 500 people from around the world are arriving in Brisbane for Linux.conf.au 2011. As last month Brisbane and indeed much of Queensland was devastated by severe flooding, it’s an incredible effort by the conference organisers that the conference is able to continue at all.

• In December of 2010, a prolonged period of torrential rain contributed to massive flooding in Queensland. With 31 people reported dead and an estimated 1 billion AUD in damages, this is a natural disaster on a large scale that was spread across the state. To put the scale of the disaster in perspective, Queensland is 1.7m square km, or larger then the state of Texas. Arriving in Brisbane on Sunday the 23rd, there were still some traces showing where the water line was, but the cleanup work has been impressive.

=> ↺ Govt lock-in overhyped: Linux Oz president

• Under the policy, government staff will operate locked desktop stations where software, browsers and add-ons are controlled by an administrator. AGIMO also mandated the OOXML standard format in the document, which is unsupported by several Office alternatives.

• The OOXML standard selection has drawn the ire of many commenters on the AGIMO blog, with some accusing the government of moving towards a vendor lock-in with Microsoft.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Vote Now: Game On Community Choice Award

• Hope you’ve had a chance to check out some of the games in the Game On Gallery over the past couple weeks. We’ve been having a lot of fun playing them ourselves and productivity is at an all-time high score!

=> ↺ Best Firefox extensions: Organize your way to a better Firefox

=> ↺ Mozilla’s Firefox Do-not-track Feature Doesn’t Guarantee Anonymity

=> ↺ Firefox’s Linuxy Hardware Acceleration Problem

=> ↺ Firefox 4 beta 10 this week, beta 11 next week

=> ↺ Firefox 4 betas 10, 11 planned

=> ↺ Mozilla Firefox 4 beta 9 beats Google Chrome 10 in terms of benchmarks

• A web browser is the gateway to internet world , so each and every company is giving their best to make their browser fast, stable and with tons of feature. forget the era of IE6, now browser are a lot faster, stable , light and took less memory. In this blog I am going to discuss two browser market’s best Firefox’s beta 9 and most innovative browser Google chrome 10.

Oracle

=> ↺ NetBeans 7.0 IDE due this spring

• Version 7. 0 of the NetBeans open source IDE is due in April, featuring capabilities for Java SE 7, as well as faster deployment to the WebLogic Server application server, according to the NetBeans Oracle-sponsored website.

• NetBeans has served as the chief rival to the Eclipse Foundation’s Eclipse IDE. In a beta release stage since mid-November, NetBeans 7.0 includes backing for Java Development Kit 7, which encompasses version 7 of the standard edition of Java. JDK 7 capabilities cited on the NetBeans 7 release notes include editor enhancements such as code completion and backing for Project Coin, which offers “small language” changes such as type inferencing.

=> ↺ Oracle continues protectionist stance on open source

• Oracle has been making what seem to some as drastic changes in the way it handles the open source projects it inherited from Sun Microsystems. The open source community has watched with anything from bemusement to outright shock at some of the actions Oracle has taken without apparent rhyme or reason. But if you look close enough, the reason will usually make itself clear soon enough.

• Last Thursday, Jaroslav Tulach, NetBeans Platform Architect for Oracle, posted a public message on the JUnit Yahoo! groups that asked the JUnit developers to consider switching from testing framework’s current Common Public License to something that would be more compatible with the rest of the NetBeans IDE.

CMS

=> ↺ Gospel Music Channel – watchgmctv.com

• Headquartered in Atlanta, the Gospel Music Channel (gmc) is a channel that features uplifting music and entertainment, including specials, movies and series that the whole family can enjoy. gmc is the only TV network with every program certified as family safe by the Parents Television Council. DIRECTV, Verizon FiOS, and local cable systems bring gmc into roughly 50 million homes across the country. The brand boasts such popular shows as Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, Highway to Heaven, Promised Land, Sister Sister, Early Edition and Amen. The website receives about 750,000 monthly page views from 250,000 unique visitors.

• The channel recently launched a full site redesign in conjunction with an upgrade from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6. The project team from Mediacurrent would like to share some of what they’ve learned from the design and build of the site with the Drupal community.

BSD

=> ↺ Popular Free *BSDs in Full Development

• Three well-known BSD clones are in their latest developmental cycles and have recently released test versions. FreeBSD is closing in on version 7.4 with a RC2, GhostBSD just released their 2.0 Beta 2, and PC-BSD 8.2 has seen its second release candidate as well.

Project Releases

=> ↺ Announce: OpenSSH 5.7 released

• OpenSSH 5.7 has just been released. It will be available from the mirrors listed at http://www.openssh.com/ shortly.

Government

=> ↺ Feds Get E for Effort with Open Source

• The majority of U.S. Cabinet-level offices in the federal government received a failing mark in their open source efforts, though a few others, such as the Department of Defense, excelled in a recent report card from an advocacy group.

Openness/Sharing

=> ↺ In Defense of Free Culture in Brazil

• We, the undersigned individuals and organizations from civil society, in this letter express expectations and tasks for the formulation of public policies for culture, giving a warm welcome to Minister Ana de Hollanda, the first woman to hold the position.

• We write in order to cooperate with your administration that is about to begin, as we have done over the past eight years with the Ministry of Culture, assured that President Dilma Rousseff wishes that the policies and guidance that have earned the Ministry relevance, prominence and broad support from civil society, be continued and expanded.

=> ↺ 2999

Open Access/Content

=> ↺ Publishers cut off doctors’ free access to medical journals in poor countries

• What a world of possibilities must have opened up for a hospital doctor or a medical student in Bangladesh or Kenya when the World Health Organisation concluded an agreement with publishers in 2001 to put the world’s most important, respected and groundbreaking medical journals online for free. Suddenly the boundaries were down. A doctor in downtown Nairobi might have a clinic with crumbling walls and precious little equipment, but he had access to the same cutting-edge knowledge as any medic in New York or London.

=> ↺ COL Blog

• It’s a great feeling to be startled by the seminal significance of an event that you expected to be routine! On 14 January I went to a reception at the residence of the US Ambassador to UNESCO, David Killion, to celebrate the launch of the World Library of Science. Not having done my homework properly I assumed that this might simply be a donation of some books to UNESCO. Instead, I believe that I was witness to the most important event of the year for the future of education globally – and certainly the most important initiative to date in the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement.

=> ↺ EFF Urges California Court to Grant Public Access to Electronic Mapping Data

• Last week, EFF joined a coalition of public interest and media groups in filing an amicus brief (pdf) urging a California Court of Appeal to uphold the public’s right to access electronic files created and stored by local governments. The case, Sierra Club v. Superior Court, focuses on the public’s right to access geographic information system (GIS) basemaps created by local governments in California.

Programming

=> ↺ Google Summer of Code Announced at LCA

• Despite the recent devastating floods in Australia, the open source community is converging on Brisbane this week for the annual linux.conf.au (LCA). The LCA team “encourages everyone to still come to Brisbane and support local business and the community – we need your support.” Monday during the introductory session at LCA, Carol Smith, member of the Google Open Source Programs Office, proudly announced Google Summer of Code 2011.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Clarence Thomas Thinks Rules Are For Other People

• Supreme Court justices are appointed for life and are not subject to the whims of electoral politics. This is so they can make their decisions on the law and what is right, not on what would get them re-elected (as many politicians do). But that does not mean there are rules they must abide by just like all other public officials or government servants.

• [...]

• The government watchdog group Common Cause is reporting that Thomas’ wife earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation between 2003 and 2007. However, Thomas’ financial disclosure statements for those years shows that he checked the box saying “none” on the part of the form where a spouse’s income was to be reported. Common Cause also believes Mrs. Thomas received an undisclosed salary from Liberty Central in 2009, and Thomas again declared no income for her on his financial statement.

=> ↺ People’s Daily European version published in Frankfurt

• With the goal of serving overseas Chinese, Chinese agencies and consulates, the new version of 28 pages will spread information on China’s political progress, economical development and cultural prosperity to European countries through objective and comprehensive reports.

=> ↺ Bookshops reply to the ebook threat

• THE digital era is often seen as a threat to the existence of the traditional bookshop. But the launch yesterday of Readings’s ebook store, using new technology developed in Melbourne, could lead the way for independent bookshops to thrive in a brave new world.

• The technology, developed by Melbourne company Inventive Labs, allows readers to buy their digital editions and read them on any device that has a web browser. The Readings store is initially offering titles from smaller publishers but negotiations to stock editions from larger ones and multinationals are under way.

=> ↺ The Death of Book Design

• It’s no wonder. All the smiling sadists with their instruments of torture, their Kindles and iBooks, their Nooks and Tabs, had been unleashed on his body. Right in public, on busses and in coffee shops, they crushed and stretched his text, madly changing from Arial to Verdana to Baskerville and back again, viciously reflowing his insides over and over. It was just too much for his system to bear.

• When a little menu popped up offering to change an entire book to Cochin in one instant, friends of Book Design knew the end wasn’t far off.

• Book Design is survived by his stepsons, Digit Al Typography and E. Books.

• There are rumors occasionally that Book Design has been sighted here or there in an old barn in Derbyshire, or off the coast of San Francisco, but no conclusive proof has ever been offered. The trade in so-called relics, like the phony Folio of Fortunata, with its promise of perfect alignment and infinite registration, are nothing but hoaxes perpetrated on the weak-minded.

=> ↺ Alternative search engine Qwiki is now open to the public

• Qwiki, an innovative search product, is a service that from its very inception has been the target of praise. The company won the most recent TechCrunch Disrupt, putting them under a large spotlight.

Science

=> ↺ Why 3D doesn’t work and never will. Case closed.

• I received a letter that ends, as far as I am concerned, the discussion about 3D. It doesn’t work with our brains and it never will.

• The notion that we are asked to pay a premium to witness an inferior and inherently brain-confusing image is outrageous. The case is closed.

=> ↺ Engineer designs his own heart implant

• Tal Golesworthy, a British engineer from Tewkesbury, suffered from Marfan syndrome, an inherited condition that threatened to split his aortic root. After being told that he urgently needed a mechanical valve implant, he designed one that was better than the one already in use, custom tailored to his heart (as displayed on his MRIs) and used a rapid prototyper to refine the design. He received his implant in 2004, and 23 more people have had them implanted since.

=> ↺ How words get the message across

• Longer words tend to carry more information, according to research by a team of cognitive scientists.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Smokers’ brains light up during smoking scenes in movies and on TV

• If your New Year’s resolutions include a plan to give up smoking, you might want to avoid the TV and steer clear of movies for a while, too.

• Scientists have found that simply watching movie stars take a drag on a cigarette is enough to spark a pattern of activity in smokers’ brains that mirrors the act of lighting up.

• This response to seeing smoking on screen is thought to make cravings more intense for those who are trying to quit a habit that kills 5 million people worldwide each year.

=> ↺ Fiji Water Flees Fiji

• The Fiji bottled water company is stomping out of Fiji in protest after the country’s government increased a tax it charges on the water from one-third of a Fiji cent to 15 cents per liter. Half of Fijians lack access to safe water while the Fiji Water company exports clean bottled water to the U.S., where Americans shell out 3,300 times what tap water costs to buy it.

• [...]

• Ironically, Fiji Water, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo — beverage companies that also extract water from developing countries facing water scarcity — have been named finalists for the U.S. Secretary of State’s 2010 Award for Corporate Excellence.

Security

=> ↺ Security advisories for Monday

=> ↺ Tuesday’s security updates

=> ↺ VLC Media Player 1.1.6 fixes critical vulnerabilities

=> ↺ Nigerian Scam Version 99.5 – Pretend To Be The FBI

• I love reading the more creative spam. Some of it’s absolutely hilarious. A long time ago, when UseNet was more active, I used to take part in a NewsGroup dedicated to making fun of spam, and spammers. We put together some truly funny stuff.

• My favorite wasn’t actually spam – a researcher who was doing a sociological study on love and sex made the mistake of posting a questionnaire to EVERY alt.sex NewsGroup, including ALT.SEX.CTHULHU. Several of us answered it, taking the roles of Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth (my contribution), and other entities who’s main interest in humans was as a dietary supplement. I wonder to this day what she thought when she saw those responses!

Defence/Police/Aggression

=> ↺ EU should appoint a mediator for Albania

• The violent clashes in Tirana, Albania, last Friday are unacceptable for a European country and for a State that aspires to become a member of the European Union. Three died and over 60 others are reported injured.

=> ↺ We are not loyal – to a government of racists! – report of the Jan.15 demonstration in Tel-Aviv

• No, no, no – Fascism will not pass! echoed the old familiar chant along King George Street – and was answered with a new and more ominous one: People, wake up! – Fascism is already passing!.

=> ↺ Wikileaks Cables on Israel’s Gaza Onslaught

• The cables give a notably one-sided account of the assault. Because they take their daily reporting primarily from the Israeli media, the cables keep a tally of rockets fired into Israel from Gaza and dramatically describe “burned dolls and destroyed children’s toys” at an unoccupied kindergarten in Beer Sheba hit by a rocket, but make virtually no mention of Israel’s intensive air and artillery bombardment of Gaza, including its civilian population. There are no reports of burned Palestinian babies or very few of destroyed property in Gaza. Even the western media provided more accurate coverage of Palestinian casualties than this.

=> ↺ Secret papers reveal slow death of Middle East peace process

• The biggest leak of confidential documents in the history of the Middle East conflict has revealed that Palestinian negotiators secretly agreed to accept Israel’s annexation of all but one of the settlements built illegally in occupied East Jerusalem. This unprecedented proposal was one of a string of concessions that will cause shockwaves among Palestinians and in the wider Arab world.

=> ↺ Enabling Crimes Against Palestinians – How Canada Subsidizes Illegal Israeli Settlements

• Canadas tax system currently subsidizes Israeli settlements that Ottawa deems illegal, however, the Conservative government says theres nothing that can be done about it.

=> ↺ Al Arakib Residents Expelled To Make Way for Trees

• On Sunday, January 16th, 2011, the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) accompanied by a heavy police presence destroyed the Bedouin village of Al Arakib for the 9th time since its total destruction in July 2010. During the village’s destruction the police forces used large amounts of violent force, including sponge bullets (a police method of crowd dispersal) which injured eleven of the residents, one of them in his eye.

=> ↺ Gulet Mohamed Headed Home?

• On Tuesday morning, the lawyer for Gulet Mohamed, an American teen who has been detained in Kuwait for a month, filed suit against the US government, claiming that by placing Mohamed on the no-fly list based only on suspicion, the government is denying him the most basic right of citizenship—the right to live in America. Just over an hour after the papers were filed, a federal district judge in Alexandria, Virginia ordered an emergency hearing. By mid-afternoon, Justice Department lawyers were in court, telling the judge that Mohamed would be on his way back to the States in short order.

=> ↺ Crisis escalates in Albania after death of 3 protesters

• A political crisis has escalated in Albania as the government and the opposition traded blame for the deaths of three protesters during a violent demonstration against an administration accused of deeply rooted corruption.

• Arrest warrants had been issued for six officers of the National Guard, army troops under Interior Ministry command who guard government institutions and senior officials, the Prosecutor General’s office said.

=> ↺ The Empire Strikes Back

• Rep. Lleana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fl), a long-time hawk on Cuba and leftist regimes in Venezuela and Bolivia, is the new chair of the powerful House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the rightist Rep. Connie Mack (D-Fl) heads up the House subcommittee on Western Hemisphere affairs. Ros-Lethinen is already preparing hearings aimed at Venezuela and Bolivia, and Mack will try to put the former on the State Department’s list of countries sponsoring terrorism.

• Ros-Lehtinen plans to target Venezuela’s supposed ties to Middle East terrorist groups and Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and to push for economic sanctions against Venezuela’s state-owned oil company and banks. “It will be good for congressional subcommittees to start talking about [President of Venezuela Hugo] Chavez, about [President of Bolivia Evo] Morales, about issues that have not been talked about,” she told the Miami Herald.

=> ↺ Woman Arrested For Recording Attempt To Report Police Officer Who Sexually Assaulted Her

• We’ve had a few stories about how police have been abusing wiretap laws to arrest people who video or audiotape the police, and here’s a whopper of a case. Apparently a woman named Tiawanda Moore has been arrested and faces 15 years in prison in a case that goes to trial shortly. Her “crime”? Apparently, after being sexually assaulted by a Chicago police officer, she went to the Chicago Police Department’s internal affairs group to report the officer.

=> ↺ Shame on the Kennedys

• In yesterday’s Boston Sunday Globe, Bryan Bender reported on the Kennedy family’s tight-fisted and iron-willed efforts to keep the official papers of Robert F. Kennedy secret. Those papers, spanning Kennedy’s public career, are housed under close guard at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. The papers of greatest interest to historians and researchers are those from Kennedy’s years of service as Attorney General in the Administration of his brother, John F. Kennedy. In particular, historians say the records presumably contain valuable archival resources — perhaps diaries, notes, messages and memos, phone logs and recordings, and other documents — that would reveal details, and answer questions, about Robert Kennedy’s role in the early 1960s as the coordinator of Operation Mongoose, a covert effort to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro or to destabilize his regime.

=> ↺ PA negotiators reject leaked report

• Palestinian Authority officials have come down hard on secret documents obtained by Al Jazeera showing that top negotiators offered major concessions to Israel in the division of holy sites and Jerusalem, the would-be capital city of a future Palestinian state.

• [...]

• “Al Jazeera tries to copy WikiLeaks,” Rabbo added.

• Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas official in Gaza told Al Jazeera that the Palestinian authority officials should be ashamed of themselves.

Cablegate

=> ↺ WikiLeaks cables: Turkey let US use airbase for rendition flights

• Turkey’s involvement in the controversial programme was revealed in a cable dated 8 June 2006, written by the then US ambassador to Turkey, Ross Wilson. The cable described Turkey as a crucial ally in the “global war on terror” and an important logistical base for the US-led war in Iraq.

=> ↺ WikiLeaks on South Africa

• An explosive WikiLeaks cable claims that spy boss and President Jacob Zuma confidante Mo Shaik threatened to expose the “political skeletons” of Zuma’s enemies.

=> ↺ The story behind the Palestine papers

• How 1,600 confidential Palestinian records of negotiations with Israel from 1999 to 2010 came to be leaked to al-Jazeera

=> ↺ 2 turned away trying to visit WikiLeaks GI

• David House and blogger Jane Hamsher say in a statement they had not had problems previously driving onto the Quantico base.

=> ↺ Submit a correction or amendment below.

• David House — a 23-year-old who just graduated from college — has been traveling from Boston to Quantico for five months to visit Bradley on his own. Everyone but David has stopped visiting Bradley; only once has a member of Bradley’s family seen him in Quantico. Just last month, David broke the news that Bradley’s physical and mental well-being were deteriorating in solitary confinement, and he was the first to challenge the Pentagon’s version of Bradley’s treatment. Because of his work for Bradley, David has been harassed by the FBI, and has had his computers and phones confiscated for several months without explanation. He recently returned from overseas, where he was raising funds for Bradley’s defense in the interim.

=> ↺ NBC: U.S. can’t link accused Army private to Assange

• U.S. military officials tell NBC News that investigators have been unable to make any direct connection between a jailed army private suspected with leaking secret documents and Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

• The officials say that while investigators have determined that Manning had allegedly unlawfully downloaded tens of thousands of documents onto his own computer and passed them to an unauthorized person, there is apparently no evidence he passed the files directly to Assange, or had any direct contact with the controversial WikiLeaks figure.

=> ↺ Wikileaks Scandal Hits paraguayan president Fernando Lugo

• Latin America – Paraguay president may need “a little help from ’upstairs’ to govern” says U.S

• Natalia Viana, 19 de dezembro de 2010, 15.00 GMT

• Paraguay president Fernando Lugo, a center-left politician who was elected to office in April 2008, was seen as a potential ally to the U.S. by the U.S. embassy in Asuncion, so long as he had “more than just a little help from ’upstairs’ to govern as president” which Lugo was apparently willing to accept.

• “(S)o far, his signals to the United States Embassy have been clear — he is grateful for our offers of assistance and wants a close relationship,” wrote U.S. ambassador James Cason to Washington on June 2, 2008, adding: “If you can’t believe a priest, who can you believe?” (See cable here)

• From 1954 to 1989, Paraguay was run by Alfredo Stroessner, a right-wing dictator whose regime is also blamed for torture, kidnappings and corruption. Lugo, a former Roman Catholic bishop, became president of the small land-locked country of 6.3 million people after promising to give land to the landless and end entrenched corruption, defeating the Colorado party which had ruled for six decades.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

=> ↺ Ex-wife of police spy tells how she fell in love and had children with him

• Environmental campaigners had been invited to the meeting at the Cock Tavern pub in Euston in June 1999. They were members of Reclaim the Streets, a group that had days earlier brought the City of London to a standstill. By chance, two strangers sat next to each other: Jim Sutton, an articulate, if at times moody, 34-year-old fitness fanatic who relished his role as the group’s driver, a function that earned him the sobriquet “Jim the Van”; and Laura, 28, an idealistic activist. Laura (not her real name) did not know that this new acquaintance, a man she would go on to marry and have children with, was in fact Jim Boyling, a police officer living undercover among eco-activists.

=> ↺ Kochs Invade Canada

• After losing their fight for Proposition 23 in California, one might have hoped the world would be safe from oil-rich climate deniers Charles and David Koch for a little while.

• But unfortunately their misinformation campaign is drifting over the border into Ontario, Canada where renewable energy is once again under fire from the “forces of yesterday.”

• Tim Hudak, the leader of Ontario’s Conservative party, wants to gut the Ontario Green Energy Act — an initiative that Al Gore has said is “widely recognized now as the single best green energy program on the North American continent.” The Environmental Defence report Faces of Transformation analyzes the impact this legislation is having in Ontario.

=> ↺ Canada sees staggering mildness as planet’s high-pressure record is “obliterated”

• The largest anomalies here exceed 21°C (37.8°F) above average, which are very large values to be sustained for an entire month.

=> ↺ Won’t Someone Think of the Trees?

• The concept of the commons derives from common land. This still lives on in England, in the form of commons – like Clapham Common – and as national forests that all can use. Against that background, I am naturally appalled that the coalition government proposes selling off our forests in order to raise a few pennies to throw into the bottomless pit of our National Debt.

Finance

=> ↺ WikiLeaks given Swiss bank account data

• Julius Baer has dismissed Elmer’s claims as baseless attempts to discredit the bank and its clients. It accuses him of both falsifying documents and sending death threats to its employees.

=> ↺ Another go at categorising money technologies

• Our current era, Money 4.0, can be dated in retrospect to 1971 when Richard Nixon finally ended the gold standard and Visa introduced the Base 1 network for authenticating card payments based on the magnetic stripe. Money 4.0 is bits about bits, but we still apply the wrong mental model, and imagine it to be bits about atoms.

=> ↺ Facebook To Make ‘Facebook Credits’ Mandatory For Game Developers (Confirmed)

• Facebook is about to ruffle some feathers. We’re hearing from one source that the social network is reaching out to game developers to inform them that it is making its own, official Facebook Credits currency mandatory. Our understanding is that it will be the exclusive currency as well.

=> ↺ Making Sense of your Credit Card Number

• You credit card number may look like a random string of 16 digits that’s unique in the world but those digits reveal a little more than you think.

• For instance, the first digit of the card represents the category of industry which issued your credit card. American Express is in the travel category and cards issued by them have 3 as the first digit. If you have VISA or MasterCard, your card’s first digit should be either 4 or 5 as they are from the banking and financial industry.

=> ↺ Plunder: The Crime Of Our Time

• ‘Plunder: The Crime of Our Time’ is a hard-hitting investigative film by Danny Schechter. The “News Dissector” explores how the financial crisis was built on a foundation of criminal activity uncovering the connection between the collapse of the housing market and the economic catastrophe that followed.

Politics/PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

=> ↺ The Vindication (by Barack Obama) of Dick Cheney

• In the early months of Obama’s presidency, the American Right did to him what they do to every Democratic politician: they accused him of being soft of defense (specifically “soft on Terror”) and leaving the nation weak and vulnerable to attack. But that tactic quickly became untenable as everyone (other than his hardest-core followers) was forced to acknowledge that Obama was embracing and even expanding — rather than reversing — the core Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism. As a result, leading right-wing figures began lavishing Obama with praise — and claiming vindication — based on Obama’s switch from harsh critic of those policies (as a candidate) to their leading advocate (once in power).

=> ↺ Clearing Out the Regulatory Smog

• The Obama administration’s announcement today that it plans to “root out regulations that conflict, that are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb” was, rather transparently, meant to appease business interests. It’s not really clear the degree to which the administration will follow through on that directive, or whether the move is a rhetorical flourish meant to stave off gripes that they’re ignoring the economy. But how dangerous is their repetition of talking points from the forces of deregulation—and with it the impression that federal agencies are sitting around making up rules just for the heck of it?

=> ↺ Chevron’s Crude Attacks

• Joe Berlinger’s back is against the wall. Last week the independent filmmaker, already facing crushing debt from legal bills, was dealt a major blow in his continuing fight against the third largest company in America, Chevron.

• It’s a battle that epitomizes the hardship individuals face trying to challenge corporate giants that punch back with a knockout force of high-powered lawyers and unlimited cash.

• What’s more, Joe’s struggle continues to raise serious First Amendment issues and — as we approach the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision — throws yet another spotlight on the increasingly pro-business stance of the nation’s legal system.

=> ↺ Phone hacking enquiry: questions to Colin Myler and Tom Crone

• Q1501 Mr Watson: Mr Crone, on the Taylor case, your advice was to settle in April 2008, I think you said?

• Mr Crone: I agreed with the outside advice that was given, yes.

• Q1502 Mr Watson: So you took it to the Board in June 2008?

• Mr Crone: No, I did not take it to the Board; I reported to Mr Myler as editor, and at one stage we both reported it upwards together.

• Q1503 Mr Watson: A £700,000 payment would be a decision taken at Board level. Is that right?

• Mr Crone: I am not aware of that.

• Q1504 Mr Watson: So the News International Board did not agree the payment in any way?

• Mr Myler: What do you mean by the “Board”?

• Q1505 Mr Watson: Your managing Board; the directors of the company.

=> ↺ Loyal Bushies Flagrantly Ignored The Law

• When we think of the Bush/Cheney White House we tend to think of policy failures, incompetence, comically flawed judgment, and systemic mismanagement.

Censorship

=> ↺ Google fights Spanish call to remove links

• GOOGLE will this week challenge a Spanish demand to remove links to articles in newspapers and official gazettes that the subjects of the articles have complained are potentially defamatory.

• Spain’s data protection authority has ordered Google to remove almost 100 online articles from its search listings, which Google says would have a ”profound, chilling effect” on freedom of expression.

• Google will challenge the orders in a Madrid court tomorrow, the outcome of which could set a controversial new precedent for internet publishing in Spain.

Privacy

=> ↺ Mozilla Leads the Way on Do Not Track

• Earlier today, Mozilla announced plans to incorporate a Do Not Track feature into their next browser release, Firefox 4.1. Google also announced a new privacy extension today, but we believe that Mozilla is now taking a clear lead and building a practical way forward for people who want privacy when they browse the web.

=> ↺ Do Corporations Have a Right to Privacy?

• This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether or not corporations have the same rights to “personal privacy” that individuals do.

• This is a good analysis of the case.

• I signed on to a “friend of the court” brief put together by EPIC, arguing that they do not.

Civil Rights

=> ↺ I’m Hugo Chávez’s prisoner, says jailed judge

• As a judge María Lourdes Afiuni thought courts had the ultimate power to jail people, but as a prisoner in a cramped cell she now believes Venezuela has a higher judicial authority: Hugo Chávez.

• The judge has spent a year among murderers and drug traffickers in Los Teques women’s jail, just outside the capital, Caracas, and if the Venezuelan president has his way she has another 29 to go.

=> ↺ Seattle man vs. TSA: ‘You do not have to show ID’ (ABQ Journal)

• A 30-something software developer, Mocek was on trial in Albuquerque after refusing to show ID to TSA officers at an airport checkpoint in that city in 2009. Officers accused him of creating a disturbance, during which he used his cell phone to record the scene. He was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, concealing his identity, refusing to obey a police officer, and criminal trespass.

=> ↺ Welcome to Police State Watch Canada

=> ↺ Police State Watch Canada

• I’d started putting this idea together months ago, but between not feeling all that well, things got delayed, so today, Monday January 24th, 2011, is the official opening date of Police State Watch.

=> ↺ The Never-ending Prisoners Votes Argument

• There is vast irony in this. The Convention on Human Rights was created to protect groups from being screwed over by their government on the basis of prejudice. And now prejudice is the only argument that is being deployed. This is illustrated by Philip Davies MP calling us, “vile creatures”. This is what this debate is reduced to. And in fairness, I hope no one now objects to my suggesting that Philip Davies is a joke of a legislator, a man who is tasked with helping guide the fate of a nation and yet whose public utterances on prisons – there are many – reveal that he is labouring under a burden of ignorance that is so profound that it must qualify him for help under the Disability Discrimination Act. On the prison landings we would dismiss him with the term “muppet”.

Internet/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Major Sites that a “tiered” Internet Would Have Killed

• From just the .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, and .us TLDs, there are over 127 Million registered domains. As of even 2002, it was estimated there were 3500-4000 ISPs in the United States. So, are these sites supposed to sign 4000 contracts each? A total of something like 508 Billion contracts in the US alone? This is positively insane.

• Maybe I’m crazy, but it seems that Wired.com has made this same argument. I, for one, will never use an ISP that cuts off access to part of what I’m paying for. Charge me for my bandwidth, just as Google’s ISP charges them for their bandwidth.

DRM

=> ↺ The Ongoing Erosion of Ownership

• Entertainment is being used as justification to erode ownership, or even cancel it outright. There is a very disturbing trend where you don’t own the things that you buy — the companies that sold them to you keeps claiming ownership even after the money has changed hands.

• Apple has been caught using nonstandard screws on the iPhone and MacBooks with the only purpose of preventing you from doing what you want with your own telephone and computer. Sony is suing people who are tinkering with their own consoles, bought for hard-earned money.

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ Chinese telecom manufacturer says Motorola sold trade secrets

• Chinese telecom manufacturer Huawei Technologies has filed a lawsuit against Motorola, accusing the technology giant of trying to transfer Huawei’s intellectual property to Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) without permission. The move is the latest in the two companies’ spat over trade secrets—a dispute that could potentially hold up the sale of Motorola’s wireless business.

• Huawei and Motorola maintained a healthy relationship for nearly a decade, as Huawei’s radio access and network technology was used in Motorola’s wireless business. According to Huawei, Motorola not only had access to Huawei’s intellectual property, the company also made use of Huawei’s team of 10,000 engineers in order to create and sell handsets directly to customers.

=> ↺ Pot Calls Kettle Black. Huawei Sues Motorola

• We never thought we’d see the day when a Chinese telecom company, which has in the past been accused of industrial espionage by U.S. companies, would sue a U.S. equipment maker. Well, that’s exactly what has happened.

• Huawei filed suit Monday to stop Motorola Solutions from selling its wireless network business to Nokia Siemens Networks, because the sale would transfer trade secrets and competitive intelligence from the Chinese equipment firm to its competitor. (By the way, Motorola had accused Huawei of industrial espionage in July 2010.) The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Illinois, seeks to stop Motorola employees and information associated with Motorola’s UMTS and GSM equipment businesses from being transferred to Nokia Siemens Networks under the $1.2-billion deal.

Copyrights

=> ↺ The State of Music Monetization

• Who’s paying for what? We’ve been getting hit with a lot of subscriber updates here and there, including a few at MidemNet this weekend. So here’s the latest monetization intelligence, please share if we’ve missed something!

=> ↺ Fair Use Symposium Published in Journal of the Copyright Society

=> ↺ FAST: ISPs, Copyright Holders Should Become Business Partners

• John Lovelock, chief executive of the Federation Against Software Theft, has apparently given up on trying to force ISPs to protect its outdated business model, saying now that it “must be in the ISPs’ commercial interest to work with rights holders to develop mutual business models.”

• There’s the old adage that “if you can beat them, join them,” and the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) seems to be taking it to heart. For years it’s fought a war against the business model of ISPs and tried to force them into the fight against illegal file-sharing with little success, so now it wants to try a different tactic by intertwining the business models of the two.

=> ↺ Leading Chinese File-Sharing Site Disables Illicit Music and Movie Downloads

• One of China’s leading file-sharing sites permanently disabled access to many music and movie downloads this weekend. Citing copyright concerns and tightening legislation, the boss of VeryCD said that after 7 years hard work since the creation of his company, times are changing. In the face of a massively disappointed userbase, VeryCD will now concentrate on directing users to licensed content.

ACTA

=> ↺ IPRED Consultation Is Decisive For the Future of the Internet

• A few days ago, the European Commission launched a new consultation on its report regarding the “Intellectual Property Rights” (IPR) enforcement directive (IPRED). The Commission’s services who drafted this report (Internal Market Directorate General) exhibit a profound misunderstanding of current technologies, as they seek to apply an unadapted copyright regime to this new digital era. That’s why it is so important that all interested citizens and NGOs take the time to submit an answer to the consultation, to tell the Commission to turn away from dogmatic repression and instead embrace the promises of the online creative economy.

Digital Economy (UK)

=> ↺ Exclusive EC raised concerns on UK Digital Economy Act cost split of 25% to ISPs

• The European Commission raised several concerns to the UK government when legislation recently laid before parliament that forces ISPs to shoulder 25% of the costs of implementing anti-copyright infringement measures of the Digital Economy Act were sent to the EC for consultation.

• Verified documents passed to this blog show that the EC did not have access to sufficient “elements” to allow it to conclude that the costs that ISPs were expected to cover fell entirely into categories of adminstrative costs permitted under European law, namely Article 12 of the Authorisation Directive (2002/20/EC on the authorisation of electronic communications networks and services).

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