Linux (en)

• Network Neutrality — Without Regulation (Slashdot)
  boyko.at.netqos writes "Timothy B. Lee (no relation to Tim Berners-Lee), a frequent contributor to Ars Technica and Techdirt, has recently written 'The Durable Internet,' a paper published by the libertarian-leaning CATO institute. In it, Lee argues that because a neutral network works better than a non-neutral one, the Internet's open-ended architecture is not likely to vanish, despite the fears of net neutrality proponents, (and despite the wishes of net neutrality opponents.) For that reason, perhaps network neutrality legislation isn't necessary — or even desirable — from an open-networks perspective. In addition to the paper, Network Performance Daily has an interview and podcast with Tim Lee, and Lee addresses counter-arguments with a blog posting for Technology Liberation Front."

  

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• FashionYourFirefox: Mozilla's (Partial) Effort to Push Extensions (Linux Today)
  OStatic: "In an effort to coax more users to take advantage of the many extensions for its Firefox browser, Mozilla has just launched FashionYourFirefox.com. The site is divided up into categories, which cater to individual interests and "online lifestyles," according to Mozilla's announcement."
• Why Doesn't Everyone Just Run Linux? (Linux Today)
  The Linux Distillery: "Linux rocks; if you have a netbook, a GPS, a portable media player or any of a number of gadgets chances are it's running Linux under the hood. That's because Linux is reliable, it's versatile, it's robust and it has no licensing fees. So why isn't it mainstream in the desktop world?"
• Lessig, Zittrain, Barlow To Square Off Against RIAA (Slashdot)
  NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's case in Boston against a 24-year-old grad student, SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, in which Prof. Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School, along with members of his CyberLaw class, are representing the defendant, may shape up as a showdown between the Electronic Frontier and Big Music. The defendant's witness list includes names such as those of Prof. Lawrence Lessig (Author of 'Free Culture'), John Perry Barlow (former songwriter of The Grateful Dead and cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation), Prof. Johan Pouwelse (Scientific Director of P2P-Next), Prof. Jonathan Zittrain (Author of 'The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It'), Professors Wendy Seltzer, Terry Fisher, and John Palfrey, and others. The RIAA requested, and was granted, an adjournment of the trial, from its previously scheduled December 1st date, to March 30, 2009. (The RIAA lawyers have been asking for adjournments a lot lately, asking for an adjournment in UMG v. Lindor the other day because they were so busy preparing for the Tenenbaum December 1st trial ... I guess when you're running on hot air, you sometimes run out of steam)."

  

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• TMI Google? (Linux Today)
  Neowin: "But if they were to hit Google, they would be getting much more that just names and credit card numbers and an address - they would essentially be getting everything that makes us... us. Search history, emails, friends lists, past conversations, pictures and even a voice sample"

• Window Kit: Investigating Windows Systems With Linux (Linux Today)
  Linux Magazine: "Criminals, intruders, and corporate saboteurs leave data behind on the hard disks of any computers they visit. Many of these computers are Windows systems, but you don’t need Windows to extract valuable forensic information from a Windows hard disk. In this article, I will describe some simple techniques for getting forensic data from a Windows disk using Linux."
• Study Recommends Online Gaming, Social Networking For Kids (Slashdot)
  Blue's News pointed out a report about a study sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation which found that online gaming and social networking are beneficial to children, teaching them basic technical skills and how to communicate in the Information Age. The study was conducted over a period of three years, with researchers interviewing hundreds of children and monitoring thousands of hours of online time. The full white paper (PDF) is also available. "For a minority of children, the casual use of social media served as a springboard to them gaining technological expertise — labeled in the study as 'geeking out,' the researchers said. By asking friends or getting help from people met through online groups, some children learned to adjust the software code underpinning some of the video games they played, edit videos and fix computer hardware. Given that the use of social media serves as inspiration to learning, schools should abandon their hostility and support children when they want to learn some skills more sophisticated than simply designing their Facebook page, the study said."

  

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• How Low Can Public Open Source Companies Go? (Linux Today)
  OStatic: "While I remain in agreement with many observers who see the economic downturn as potentially very positive for open source, I have to wonder whether we're going to see some of the leadership open source companies swallowed up in all the financial carnage."
• CRTC Rules Bell Can Squeeze Downloads (Slashdot)
  pparsons writes "Bell Canada Inc. will not have to suspend its practice of 'shaping' traffic on the Internet after a group of companies that resell access to Bell's network complained their customers were also being negatively affected. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission today released a decision that denied the Canadian Association of Internet Providers' request that Bell be ordered to cease its application of the practice to its wholesale customers."

  

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• MIT and NASA Designing Silent Aircraft (Slashdot)
  Iddo Genuth writes "Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics recently won a contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to design quieter, more energy efficient, and more environmentally friendly commercial airplanes. The two-million-dollar contract from NASA is just an initial step in bringing green technologies to the sky."

  

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• Ubuntu Muslim Edition 8.10 Released (Linux Today)
  Softpedia: "The hard working team behind the UbuntuME (Ubuntu Muslim Edition) project announced today a new version of their Linux-based operating system. Ubuntu Muslim Edition 8.10 is based on Intrepid Ibex, also known as the Ubuntu 8.10 operating system."
• Some Open Source Attacks on Windows May be Unfair (Linux Today)
  ZDNet: "Over the course of a month Apple's downtime was 2 minutes, putting them in the middle of the pack. Microsoft's? An hour and 19 minutes. This proves what, exactly?"
• Linux Distros and Apple Beat Microsoft's Homepage Uptime (Linux Today)
  Royal Pingdom: "All Linux distributions have their own home base: their homepage. How well is this homepage taken care of and how well does it perform? To answer these questions we have monitored the uptime and load time of the homepages for 16 Linux distributions for a month."
• Linus Torvalds' Old Company Acquired and Gone (Linux Today)
  TGDaily: "The company's most famous employee, Linux inventor Linux Torvalds, kept the buzz and rumor mill about the company throughout its stealth phase alive and guaranteed a flashy technology announcement in early 2000. Almost nine years later Transmeta’s journey is over."
• Spider Missing After Trip To Space Station (Slashdot)
  Garabito writes "A spider that had been sent to the International Space Station for a school science program was lost. Two arachnids were sent in order to know if spiders can survive and make webs in space, but now only one spider can be seen in the container. NASA isn't sure where the other spider could have gone. I, for one, welcome our new arachnid overlords."

  

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• Apple's New MacBooks Have Built-in Copy Protection Measures (Linux Today)
  AppleInsider: "The Intel-developed technology is called High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and aims to prevent copying of digital audio and video content as it travels across a variety of display connectors, even if such copying is not in violation of fair use laws."
• Studios Sue Oz ISP Over Allowing Piracy (Slashdot)
  Da Massive writes "Leading Hollywood film studios Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Disney Enterprises are suing Australia's second largest ISP, iiNet, saying it's complicit in the infringement of their copyrighted material. According to a statement of claim, 'the ISP knows that there are a large number of customers who are engaging in continuing infringements of copyright by using BitTorrent file sharing technology.'"

  

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• Google Terminates Lively (Slashdot)
  FornaxChemica writes "In a surprise move, Google announced today, both on-site and in its blog, that it will permanently shut down its 3D virtual world, Lively, by the end of the year. This makes Lively one of Google's few scrapped products, and one of the most short-lived, too, barely lasting 6 months. No official reason was given, only that Google wants to 'prioritize [its] resources and focus more on [its] core search, ads and apps business.' Lively might have taken too much and given back too little, even by Google's standards."

  

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• 64-Bit Linux Adobe Flash Player: Surprisingly good (Linux Today)
  Cyber Cynic: "Talk about a change in priorities! When Adobe decided it was time to start work on a 64-bit Flash Player, they didn't release the first test version on Windows or Mac OS X. No, they released it on Linux and Solaris. Wow."
• Mozilla Revenues Hit $75 Million - Hello IRS (Linux Today)
  Netstat -vat: "Mozilla Chief Wrangler Mitchell Baker today reported Mozilla's financial position which shows 2007 revenues of $75 million up by 12 percent from 2006 revenues of $67 million. Though Mozilla is on the upswing, Baker's report shows some areas of potential future financial concerns."

• Take Five (Linux Today)
  Realeyes Technology: "Jazz fans will recognize the title of this post as one of the most famous jazz pieces ever written. It was composed and performed by the Dave Brubeck Quartet and was part of the album Time Out, which contained several pieces in unusual time signatures."
• Sun Wrestles Itself With StarOffice 9 (Linux Today)
  Linux.com: "StarOffice 9 reminds me of the classic Monty Python skit in which Graham Chapman wrestles himself. Although StarOffice is being aggressively presented as an alternative to Microsoft Office, it seems to be equally marketed and bundled to compete against OpenOffice.org, the free software project that is sponsored by Sun and that shares a common code base with StarOffice. The trouble is, the differences between the two have diminished with each release, until, with StarOffice 9, you have to wonder who the potential customers might be."
• IRS Looking at Google/Mozilla Relationship (Slashdot)
  ric482 writes "With the release of the Mozilla Foundation's 2007 financial report, questions have been raised by the IRS, who are due to perform an audit on the non-profit organization behind the massively popular Firefox browser. Last year, the Foundation received $66 million of its total $75 million revenue (88 percent) from search engine maestros Google, so the IRS are looking for blood over the organization's tax exempt status. Back in 2006, Mozilla got $59.5 million from Google — around 85 percent of the organization's revenue. Google and Mozilla are part of a 'you scratch my back, I'll pay your bills' sort of agreement, with the Google search bar firmly placed in the toolbar, and on the default homepage. Things were a bit rocky a couple of months back when Google unveiled the Beta-run of its Chrome browser, but Mozilla and Google hugged it out and sealed a deal that will last for another three years. That deal will expire in November 2011."

  

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• Most of Woolly Mammoth Genome Reconstructed (Slashdot)
  geekmansworld writes "From the Washington Post, 'An international team of scientists has reconstructed more than three-quarters of the genome of the woolly mammoth using DNA extracted from balls of hair, the first time this has been accomplished for an extinct species.' Who wants a pet mammoth?"

  

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• O'Reilly Webcast: Everything You Wanted to Know About Drupal but Were Afraid to Ask (Linux Today)
  O'Reilly Media: "Join us for this free live webcast:
  Everything you wanted to know about Drupal but were afraid to ask; Presented by Jeff Eaton and James Walker, authors of "Using Drupal"

• Hardening The Linux Kernel With Grsecurity (Debian) (Linux Today)
  HowtoForge: "Security is based on three characteristics: prevention, protection and detection. Grsecurity is a patch for Linux kernel that allows you to increase each of these points."
• New Xbox Experience Goes Live (Slashdot)
  Today, Microsoft launched the New Xbox Experience for Xbox Live. The list of new features includes the streaming of TV shows and movies through Netflix, the ability to install games to the HDD, an avatar system, and the Community Games platform. The launch itself was shaky at first, but most issues have been smoothed out. Sony-owned Columbia Pictures immediately pulled their movie selection, though it may return when a licensing deal gets worked out. Halo 3 developer Bungie pointed out that not all games will run faster when installed to a HDD because of the way the games already interact with the drive.

  

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• Mounting Xen Virtual Machine Storage on Physical Hosts (Linux Today)
  SearchEnterpriseLinux: "In the event that something happens to a Xen virtual machine (VM) that prevents you from starting it, it's a good practice to have the virtual machine storage back end mounted in the Linux file system of the Xen-based server. By doing so, you'll be able to repair the VM quickly and painlessly. In this tip, I'll cover how to do this for physical devices that are used as storage back ends."
• Ulteo Unveils the First Open Source Virtual Desktop (Linux Today)
  Ulteo: "Following its commitment to desktop virtualization solutions, Ulteo, an Open Virtual Desktop Infrastructure company, announced today that they were releasing the first installable version of their Open Virtual Desktop solution for enterprises."
• Phoronix 2008 Linux Graphics Survey (Linux Today)
  Phoronix: "This year we're hosting the survey again to allow the development community to get a better understanding of the video hardware in use, what open-source and closed-source drivers are being used, and other relevant information."