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● 09.06.11

● Links 6/9/2011: Android 3.2 Previews, wdiff 1.0.0 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 6:30 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ Government of Canada Enters 21st Century

• I was poking around a GC site when I found that “Linux” was a supported OS. Not only that but they supported Fedora Core 8 or Ubuntu 7.1 and FireFox 2.0.0.6+. I had none of those (Ubuntu 7.1 should probably be Ubuntu 7.10) but Debian GNU/Linux, the current version, Squeeze, worked just fine.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Sasken Offers Linux(R)-based Media Framework & Services on Texas Instruments’ DaVinci(TM) Digital Media Platform

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ Untangling the Linux graphics stack

• As I tried to explain this a few times in the past to others and had trouble myself, when I started using Linux, I thought I take some time today and write down what parts comprise the Linux graphics stack and how they interact. I’ll ignore some parts which aren’t too interesting to an average user at the moment, to keep this post as consise as possible. Apart from that, I hope I’m able to put all the relevant data into one spot.

Applications

=> ↺ Introducing The amazing GPS (Gimp Paint Studio)

• It would be hard to find a Linux user who´s never heard of GIMP, the incredibly powerful GNU Image Manipulation Program. Unfortunately, GPS (Gimp Paint Studio) may not be known to that many people, but it certainly deserves to be, and users deserve to know about it.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Bootstrapping an Ubuntu Server on Rackspace Using Cloud-Init and Fog

Games

=> ↺ Spirited Heart Girl’s Love Is Out !

• Winter Wolves released Spirited Heart Girl’s Love which is the yuri expansion to the popular fantasy life simulation game Spirited Heart.

=> ↺ Tetris Meets Physics In This Crazy New Version

=> ↺ Mari0 : Super Mario Bros. with a Portal Gun

=> ↺ Dungeons of Dredmor still coming to Linux!

=> ↺ Salem : New Crafting MMO for Linux Previewed at Gamescom 2011

• A new crafting MMO game Salem is coming soon to Linux. Published by Paradox Interactive and developed by Seatribe, the game is currently heavily under development with a closed alpha expected next month.

=> ↺ Unity GNU/Linux Update

• Cameron Bonde aka Vectrex has found an update on the Unity GNU/Linux Exporter that was posted earlier on LGN.

=> ↺ Unity GNU/Linux Update

=> ↺ Gametype-Revolution

=> ↺ Germany Lifts ‘Doom’ Ban After 17 Years – Toast Demons To Celebrate

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

=> ↺ Share, Like and Connect

• An important part of the Plasma Active Contour user interface is the connection between the objects that i can view with my tablet, like images, webpages, and documents with the current activity, to help to organize your work and fun.

GNOME Desktop

=> ↺ Get A Global Menu In GNOME Shell

• Remember Gnome2 Global Menu? It’s an applet that adds a global menu (the menu is displayed on the top panel) for Gnome 2 that wasn’t very active for a long time because Ubuntu built its own global menu. But it’s back!

=> ↺ Empathy at startup in Gnome 3

=> ↺ More GNOME 3 inanity

• In the brave new world of GNOME 3, there is no minimize button. Why? Here is the thinking behind it. Wow, he asked a whole two people — on the GNOME team! That’s not even usability testing. It’s like he asked for a focus group and no one came …

Distributions

=> ↺ A distro that goes Plop

• For the most part my experiences with Plop were good.

New Releases

=> ↺ BackBox Linux 2 penetration testing distribution released

• The BackBox development team has released version 2.0 of its penetration testing distribution. According to the developers, the latest release has a new look and feel, as well as a significant performance boost over previous versions.

• Based on Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal”, BackBox 2 includes the 2.6.38 Linux kernel and version 4.8.0 of the Xfce desktop environment. The release adds three new security audit sections: Vulnerability Assessment, Forensic Analysis and VoIP Analysis.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

=> ↺ Mandriva 2011 “Hydrogen” indepth Overview/Review

=> ↺ A Mageia Rant

• I’ve done a lot of Linux installs, but I’ve never seen this much hardware work right-out-of-the-box on any machine, let alone a laptop. The Win7 side couldn’t see the Bluetooth mouse without the driver CD, but Mageia 1 had it covered. Amazing.

Red Hat Family

Fedora

=> ↺ Install Global Menu in Fedora 15

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Beta1 screenshots Tour

=> ↺ Ubuntu 11.10 beta 1 screenshot preview

=> ↺ The Ubuntu Login Sound in 5.1 Channel Glory

=> ↺ Early look on Ubuntu Friendly – Ensure the hardware you buy would supports Ubuntu!

=> ↺ Five Years At Canonical

=> ↺ Ubuntu 11.10: Proposed Aero Snap effect

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ Was it my DreamLinux?

• It comprises modular structure familiar to me from SLAX with stability of Debian. Dreamlinux has ability to install on USB with persistence option. It includes all the necessary codecs for multimedia.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ RaspberryPi — Your credit-card sized computer

• For a couple of months, I’ve been watching RaspberryPi with a lot of interest, because I think these guys are about to do something really cool for the computer industry.

Phones

=> ↺ MeeGo to follow webOS into mobile limbo?

=> ↺ Chinaqualitycrafts.com: Intel May Stop the Development of MeeGo Platform

=> ↺ Report: Intel Stopping Development on MeeGo

Android

=> ↺ HTC Flyer Android 3.2 update confirmed and pictured

• A relatively complete developer test version of the Honeycomb update for HTC’s Flyer tablet appeared over the weekend, showing that, yes, HTC’s quirky 7″ tablet will indeed get an update to the tablet version of Google’s OS at some point in the future.

=> ↺ Motorola Xoom gets another price cut in the UK, now just £330

Free Software/Open Source

=> ↺ Understanding open source technologies, the ethical way

• The recent times have seen many big companies and even US government face brunt of invasions by hackers from other countries, creating a huge impact on world politics.

• With this trend several hackers offer help in repairing vulnerabilities in such systems. They in turn demand payments for the same, which is not ethical, because their work does not comply with pure assurance that an ethical hacker always guarantees.

• Thus for us ethical hackers, this unethical wayposes a threat to our image, which is yet to be repaired in the minds of governments and people in general.

Web Browsers

=> ↺ Browsers… a Wee Bit Off the Beaten Path

• Tired of those mainstream browsers like Firefox and Chrome in Linux? You have other options, folks.

SaaS

=> ↺ Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos Discusses Open Source Clouds

Databases

=> ↺ NSA proposes Accumulo NoSQL database to Apache

• Built on top of Apache’s Hadoop, Zookeeper and Thrift projects, Accumulo is a distributed key/value store based on the design of Google’s BigTable. Developed by the US National Security Agency (NSA), the Accumulo project has now been proposed to the Apache Software Foundation for consideration and incubation as a new Apache project. Accumulo’s big difference is that it has fine-grained label-based access control, which could allow different users to access a record but only see the fields they are allowed to see; the NSA developers believe such a database could work in “government, health care, and other industries where privacy is a concern”.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

=> ↺ Another Crack in Oracle’s Case Against Google

=> ↺ Oracle v. Google – Google Knocks Another (Minor) Chip Out of Oracle

• Two weeks ago Google won the right to file a motion for summary judgment on Oracle’s affirmative defense of assignor estoppel. As we explained at that time, Oracle was arguing that, since Google now employs some of the named inventors in the patents Oracle is asserting against Google, Google should be precluded from challenging the validity of those patents.

• Oracle has now decided to throw in the towel on that defense by agreeing to stipulate to its dismissal with prejudice, i.e., they cannot reassert this defense again in this case. 387 [PDF] This is not that big a deal. There was almost no chance that Oracle was going to be successful with the assignor estoppel defense (their attempt to apply it in this case went far beyond anything any court has allowed). Nevertheless, it knocks one more issue off the table. Note that the dismissal with prejudice on this defense is not final until the judge enters the order, but given the parties have agreed to the stipulation, that is a mere formality.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ Software Freedom Day to be Celebrated September 17, 2011

=> ↺ Software Freedom Day

=> ↺ IT’S JUST “THE BEGINNING”

Project Releases

=> ↺ wdiff 1.0.0 released

• So what has changed? As user noticeable changes we have updated translations for Updated Dutch, French, Danish and Slovenian as well as a completely new translation file for Ukrainian thanks to Yuri Chornoivan. The code will now give more useful results in case the diff program either cannot be executed or fails for some reason.

Public Services/Government

=> ↺ Can Whitehall open up to open source?

• What’s Whitehall’s attitude to software procurement? A cynic might sum it up as “nobody ever got sacked for buying Microsoft”.

• The current government has vowed to change the civil service mindset that has always preferred to spend money with the biggest firms and has been conservative about open source software.

• The Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude has vowed to create a level playing field for open source as part of a drive to cut costs.

• Now a BBC Freedom of Information (FOI) request has given us a glimpse of how big the challenge will be.

=> ↺ Government a closed shop for open source

• Amid promises from the current Government to give greater opportunities to open-source providers, the BBC made a flurry of Freedom of Information Act requests aimed at discovering the use of non-proprietary software in Whitehall.

• The figures from each department are hardly conclusive and vary in detail, but point to a situation in which conservatism rules the day, with civil-service buyers reluctant to look past low-risk, high-cost packages from big-name suppliers.

=> ↺ Indian Government Takes the Open Source Route

• The draft ‘Policy On Device Drivers For Procurement Of Hardware For e-Governance’ states that the, “Government of India (GOI) endeavours to provide e-governance services, which are technology-neutral, cost-effective, interoperable and vendor-neutral. The GOI Policy on open standards is a step towards meeting this objective in the development of e-governance applications.” The policy will be applicable in all new e-governance projects, as well as in existing ones.

=> ↺ Department for Transport Embraces Open Source Platform and Cloud-Based Hosting in Latest Kainos Project

• The Department for Transport (www.dft.gov.uk/) has become the latest central Government organisation to extend its relationship with Causeway, the application management services arm of Kainos, with a new contract to support the Department’s web activities and migration to a cloud-based open source platform.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Armageddon of IT

• The “innocent” third parties for this change could either ship their products in virtual machines paying the “tax” or they could port their software to GNU/Linux. Either way would cost ISVs some money but all the software makers owe the manufacturers of all that lovely hardware a lot, I figure. They should be glad to contribute to software freedom. End users might need some retraining but the OEMs could easily host training sites to prepare users. There could be lots of opportunity for smaller ISVs to compete against the big guys if they can get software working on GNU/Linux sooner than the big guys.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Nurses to Obama: Heal America, Tax Wall Street!

• As President Obama gets ready for his big jobs speech Thursday, America’s nurses have a message for him. “Heal America, Tax Wall Street!” the signs read as nurses rallied in front of 61 Congressional offices this week. The nurses are proposing a bold alternative to the “cut, cut, cut” rhetoric emanating from Washington, D.C.

Cablegate

=> ↺ Cables mentioning “Special 301″

• Below are links to two web page pages that have links to 973 U.S. Department of State cables identified on September 5, 2011, using the http://cablegatesearch.net/ tool for searching 251,287 Wikileaks cables, and the search term, “special 301.”

=> ↺ “Who is Wikileaks?…A huge lie!” Bulgarian PM Borisov comments on the cables…

=> ↺ India’s Mayawati says ‘Wikileaks founder has gone mad’

=> ↺ WikiLeaks cable: Gaddafi funded, trained CPP-NPA rebels

Finance

=> ↺ Pray for Goldman Sachs

• Because no amount of money ultimately protects you against the collapse of a nation, against raging compatriots in the streets too desperate to care anymore. Look at Rome, Greece, Rwanda, Russia (twice recently — the Czars, then the Commies). Take a look at Gaddafi, Hussein and all the other leaders in the Middle East who have been feasting off their people.

=> ↺ WHo Do You THiNK BuiLT AMeRiCa?

• Watch the news this Labor Day. You will have the unique opportunity to hear and see politicians, robbers, thieves and human strip miners tell you about how they have the best interests of “working” American men and women at heart.

Civil Rights

=> ↺ Facebook Complains About German Sites Changing Functionality Of ‘Like’ Button To Comply With Law

• Who’s more powerful when it comes to determining how social voting functionality works in Germany? The government or Facebook? You may recall a few weeks ago there were reports of a German official effectively banning the Facebook “like” button on third party sites as a privacy violation. While it doesn’t say it’s officially in response to this, the German news site Heise implemented a neat little workaround, in which you have to first click on the icon to “activate” it, and then you can click the “like” (Google translation of the original German). Under this system, the “like” button isn’t loaded until a user clicks on it, thus there’s no issue of Facebook automatically tracking folks via the button.

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