This is a page of all my syndicated feeds. This is mostly for me, but you’re welcome to read it if you want.
fsdaily.com - Free Software News - Published news » Banshee 1.0 is more than an audio player (video)
Banshee 1.0 is finally here, and the development team has added a truck load of new features; making it not only an audio player but a full blown media player and manager. This video discusses all of the new and improved features of version 1.
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Planet Ubuntu » Jacob Peddicord: Introducing Xeiso - soon.
I’m too tired to write a clever opening for this post. There. Now that that’s out of the way, let me introduce Xeiso.
Xeiso is:
- A game console.
- An operating system.
- A bootable LiveCD.
- An intuitive interface.
- Open source.
Time to elaborate: it will be an Ubuntu-based system with a custom interface with the goal of making a fast-booting, open game console. I’ve been researching solutions for a few months now, and have been testing out various languages and methods, from C++/SDL, to Python/Pygame, and back to C++/OpenGL. But now I think I’ve finally found a compatible, fast development …
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Planet Ubuntu » Nick Ellery: Hardy 8.04.1 is out!
Hardy 8.04.1 has been released! Looks like lots of major bugs have been fixed. I’ll be updating my Hardy installation within the next few days.
You can read more here. You’ll find release notes as well as information on upgrading to .1.
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dl.tv DivX video » dl.tv 239 Jul 3, 2008: Video Card Round-Up!
DL.TV Ep 239: Jason Cross of ExtremeTech.com is on the show today. Jason has the latest and greatest in the world of video cards. California Goes Hands-Free. We show you the options out there to avoid a ticket. Tech Pics, Viewer Questions and more.
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Techdirt » Do J.R.R. Tolkien's Kids Deserve Money For The Lord Of The Rings Movies?
There are some competing opinion pieces in the LA Times, starting off with one siding with J.R.R. Tolkien's kids in their legal fight for royalties from the Lord of the Rings trilogy movies:
Tolkien obviously isn't Peter Jackson, who directed the franchise, or Liv Tyler or Viggo Mortensen, who starred in it, or New Line Cinema, the studio that financed it, or Miramax, which owned the film rights for a second but couldn't get the movie made, or producer Saul Zaentz, who bought the rights in 1976. He's just the guy who dreamed up the cosmology, the whole shebang of …
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Planet Ubuntu » Jonathan Riddell: 8.04.1 Released, Planet Powers
Two micro blogs while I wait for ibuprofen to stop my wisdom tooth from hurting so much…
Kubuntu 8.04.1 has been released, featuring a large bunch of updates.
I can now edit the planetkde configuration file. If you're too lazy to e-mail clee, feel free to ping me on IRC.
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Ubuntu Weblogs » Scott Wegner: Introducing: Pwdhash Sharp 0.8.4
I’ve started another pet project for the summer, and I believe it’s ready for a stable release. The program is called Pwdhash Sharp, and it’s a C#, Gtk-based desktop implementation of the PwdHash password-generator, written for Ubuntu. We’ve written about PwdHash before, but if you’re not familiar:
PwdHash automatically replaces the contents of [site address and password] fields with a one-way hash of the pair (password, domain-name). As a result, the site only sees a domain-specific hash of the password, as opposed to the password itself. A break-in at a low security site exposes password hashes rather than an actual …
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Techdirt » Virgin: We Won't Cut Off File Sharers; Sends Envelope Saying 'We May Cut You Off'
After reports said that UK broadband ISP Virgin Media would become the recording industry's copyright cop, Virgin came out denying it, saying that kicking users off the internet was draconian. However, it later admitted that it would send warning letters to people, based on the flimsy evidence used by the recording industry. Now Virgin has started sending out those letters, claiming that it's just sending letters and that there is "absolutely no possibility" that it would ban file sharers from connecting to the internet. That must explain why it sent the first batch of warning letters to people in envelopes … [Link]
Planet Ubuntu » Tiago Faria: GNU/Linux software to control Roomba
I’m sure there are quite a few GNU/Linux users who own this great gadget (read: slave). I was wondering what do you guys use to control the robot?
I have mine equipped with a RooTooth, and it works great when I control it using my wife’s cellphone. I haven’t, on the other hand, found a good piece of software to control it from my computers.
Any recommendations? Also, has anyone installed GNU/Linux on it?
Links: iRobot - Roomba
My Roomba taking a shower: Roomba 530 - Gallery
Copyright © 2008 Tiago Faria
Digital fingerprint: f40c9f06bf22a03d8f85bbeee9889816 [Link]
Planet Ubuntu » John Meinel: This Week in Bazaar
This is the 9th in a series of posts about current topics in the development world of the Bazaar distributed version control system. The series is co-authored by John Arbash Meinel, one of the primary developers on Bazaar, and Elliot Murphy, unlicensed health professional. This week we are joined by Paul Hummer, who works on integrating Bazaar into Launchpad.
How to integrate bzr into your build and release process
Once you are happily using bzr on your project, the next step is some basic integration into your build process. A common desire is getting revision number to store during build process, … [Link]
Planet Ubuntu » Chris Gregan: Testing in the open source world. Part 1
Intro
Today I would like to begin a several part series about quality assurance testing and how it can work with open source software and projects. There are several stages to be aware of and many techniques to accomplish a high level of quality and code coverage. Although I am familiar with many of these, in an effort to keep things as simple as possible, I will only talk about the most popular aspects of each stage of testing. Enjoy.
How To Begin - a.k.a Requirements
Software comes in many shapes and sizes, and each with it's own varying amount … [Link]
Techdirt » Mark Cuban's Wrong: Porn Filtering On YouTube Doesn't Mean It Loses Safe Harbors
Mark Cuban has a weird obsession with trying to convince people that YouTube is illegal, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. His latest discussion on the topic is a real stretch. In response to the bad ruling that gives YouTube log files to Viacom, Cuban is saying that Viacom can now wipe out Google's DMCA safe harbors by showing that the company filters porn.
This is simply incorrect. The DMCA safe harbors do not claim that if you filter any material you must filter it all. Filtering out porn is a different beast than filtering out infringing content. You … [Link]
Planet Ubuntu » Quim Gil: Maemo Summit: registration open & free
The first Maemo Summit! - Free registration - Who is attending
Berlin, September 19-20 @ c-base - right after OSiM World
We aim to get the interesting people:
- Maemo community rock stars.
- Maintainers of related upstream projects.
- Professional developers familiar with the platform.
- A good representation of the Maemo SW team @ Nokia.
- You.
The schedule is open to proposals. No formal call for papers, just propose and help getting it right.
People is reporting interesting stories about affordable travel and accommodation. It’s going to be fun.
Image: Space invaders, by Kurtxio (some rights reserved).
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Planet Ubuntu » Mike Basinger: Open Source Stats Programs?
My wife is looking for an Open Source Statistics program for Linux that does multinomial logistic regression and can import from spss, stata, or other popular statistic programs. Please e-mail me (mike.basinger(at)gmail.com) if you know of any programs that could work.
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Techdirt » Lawyer Seriously Slapped Down For SLAPP Attempt Against Librarian Blogger
We've covered the concept of SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suits plenty of times before. These are bogus lawsuits filed to try to bully a critic into shutting up. In one such case, involving an incredibly broad subpoena against a librarian blogger compiling information on the potential link between mercury and autism, a magistrate judge has seriously smacked down the lawyer who filed the subpoena. The blogger had merely published on her blog information about the fees the lawyer in question had received. In response, the lawyer subpoenaed a ridiculous amount of information from her: "all documents pertaining to … [Link]
Planet Ubuntu » Martin Meredith: COMPRESSED AIR!
Yes, that toything. Hehe.
Ok, so after one of my Flatmates decided to tread on my wireless dongle (which I had trailing on a long USB cable down the stairs outside my room so I could actually pick up the signal!) and break it, I haven’t used my Desktop machine in a good few months. It was pretty much of a case of without internet access, it was pretty useless other than for watching DVDs on 
(which is when I’d boot it up) - so I used my eeePC instead.
Anyway, I went out and bought a nice new PCI Wireless …
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Techdirt » Theaters Working To Make Even The Pre-Show Ads More Entertaining
Two different themes we've discussed here quite often are (1) that movie theaters need to stop worrying about piracy, and focus more on improving the moviegoing experience and (2) that advertising is content — and it better be good content if you want the advertising to be effective. That's why it's somewhat encouraging to see that movie theaters are now experimenting with much more entertaining and interactive "pre-show" advertising. They're doing things like using motion sensors to have the audience "play" a game as a group, or having them use their mobile phones to vote on certain questions on the … [Link]
Planet Ubuntu » Matthew Helmke: Introducing Ubuntu Community Interviews
Since September 2007, my friend and co-worker in the Ubuntu Forums, K.Mandla, has been doing interviews with forum members on his blog, Motho ke motho ka botho, giving all of us an opportunity to get to know some of the people who are consistently helpful and friendly contributors to our community. This has been a fun way to introduce the wonderful members of our worldwide forum community to one another in a little bit deeper way, with posts coming once every two to six weeks*, depending on the time of year, how busy everyone is, and how easy or difficult it …
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Techdirt » Has Broadband Growth Stalled In The US?
A new survey on broadband adoption in the US suggests that broadband adoption in the US may be leveling off, or stalling out completely as the numbers aren't all that different than they were at the end of 2007 (55% have broadband now, compared to 54% in December). Of course, there are a variety of different groups out there trying to measure broadband penetration in the US, and they all seem to turn up different numbers — so these numbers shouldn't necessarily be taken as fact. The report suggests the economic situation may have something to do with it, though … [Link]
fsdaily.com - Free Software News - Published news » UnConfusing The Issue Of Disabling Root On Linux or Unix
A look at various ways to secure the root account against system users and some in-use methods that seem to cause more harm than good.
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fsdaily.com - Free Software News - Published news » 5 Reasons A Dark Theme will Ruin Ubuntu
Over at arstechnica there is a glimpse at the new Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex. A few screenshots show that Ubuntu is still going dark. The direction they are headed is not very clear. Even by scanning other user’s comments it appears its not a very popular idea, and I agree 100%! Here are 5 reasons a dark theme will only hurt Ubuntu
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Planet Ubuntu » Michael Vogt: Git For Bzr Users
I love bzr, it is elegant, simple and does not get in my way. And it has never let me down, everything I wanted to do with it worked in the way I expected it to work. But sometimes I have to use git and usually I’m confused by it. I would like to share some of my finding about the sources of this confusion in the hope that you have a easier time with it then 
Please note that this list is by far not complete and its just what I found from a user perspective. Please also note that …
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Techdirt » Viacom Gets To Find Out What YouTube Videos You Watched
In the ongoing trainwreck that is Viacom's misguided lawsuit against YouTube (the one they would be better off losing) a judge has come out with a ruling on evidence that Google has to hand over to Viacom — and it's being portrayed in the press as both a win and a loss for Google. On the "win" side, Google does not have to hand over the YouTube source code (or the source code of its filtering system). This makes sense, as the source code is rather meaningless here, and this request was clearly a reach from the start.
However, much … [Link]
Planet Ubuntu » Og Maciel: My first blueprint for Ubuntu
Today I created a blueprint I intend to promote for Launchpad’s Rosetta workflow. Titled “The process by which translation teams can better handle collaboration” (and its matching full specification), it is my intent to describe a mechanism by which translation teams can better administrate the contributions sent by Rosetta users, provide useful feedback and take a first step toward a better relationship with upstream projects.
I kindly invite those interested in the same topic to subscribe to the blueprint and add their feedback to the specification page, specially those who like me have their feet in both upstream and Rosetta …
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Planet Ubuntu » Jono Bacon: UDS In December and MOTU Vid
A few bits of Ubuntu news for you all.
Firstly, I am pleased to announce the next Ubuntu Developer Summit which will take place from Monday 8th - Friday 12th December 2008 at Google in Mountain View in California. We wanted to get the dates up ASAP so you can begin booking time in your calendar. We were at Google a few years ago for a UDS and it was excellent, and we expecting this to be a busy and productive UDS. Oh, and the food is incredible, but that is documented well enough already. Seriously though, reserve those dates in …
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fsdaily.com - Free Software News - Published news » Support for 100+ webcams in Linux 2.6.27 (USB Video Class Driver)
According to a thread on the Linux uvcvideo driver mailing list if everything goes well we will see it included in the 2.6.27 kernel!
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fsdaily.com - Free Software News - Published news » Easy To Use Kid Friendly 3D Game Maker Platinum Arts Sandbox Beta 2.2.0 Release!
Sandbox is a game design tool based on the Cube 2 engine that allows users to quickly and easily create and edit their own worlds in game, even cooperatively. It is free, open source, and easy to use for Kids and Adults.
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GeekAlerts » LED Light USB Tube Speaker
This glowing tube-shaped USB speaker connects to MP3 and CD players, PDAs and other digital products using a standard 3.5mm stereo audio plug.
Features:
- Powered by USB
- Built-in blue LED light tube
- Stereo sound
- Can be connected to PC/Notebook/MP3/CD player
- Dimension: Tube ~ 150 x 45 x 45mm, , Base ~ 72 x 78 x 25mm
- Weight: 160g
The USB LED Light Tube Speaker is available from USB Brando for $22.
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Techdirt » US Gov't: Do Not Carry Your Social Security Number; US Gov't: You Must Carry Your Social Security Number
The classic concept of how to force someone to think for themselves rather than mindlessly obey authority is to have two equally powerful authority figures demand that the individual do the completely opposite actions (an example: having two top generals on either side of a low ranking soldier, one demanding he sit down, and the other demanding he stand). Somehow, though, I doubt that's the reasoning behind conflicting messages coming from the US government concerning whether or not you should carry your social security number on you. Jim Harper points us to the fact that the Federal Trade Commission has … [Link]
Planet Ubuntu » Christer Edwards: Printing Directly To PDF in Ubuntu 8.04
In a release long, long ago and in a galaxy far, far away I blogged about how to configure Ubuntu to print directly to a .pdf file. Looking back to this article it appears to be outdated an in need of some corrections. This tutorial will outline how to use and, if needed, configure your Ubuntu 8.04 machine to print directly to a .pdf file.
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Radosh.net » $5 a Gallon is the "Highway to Hell" Threshold
How high is the price of gas? It's so high, the local newsradio hacks are accompanying stories about it with… "Don't Fear the Reaper."
Meanwhile, the same media outlet and many others have been running with this story as some sort of illustration of the effects of rising oil prices.
Which, of course, makes no sense whatsoever—how is selling yourself for a $100 gas card any different from, or more newsworthy than, selling yourself for $100 and eventually using that cash to refuel your vehicle? Or, in fact, selling yourself for a $100 Starbucks card, then trading that to a yuppie …
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Techdirt » EFF, ACLU Sue To Find Out Details Of Gov't Use Of Mobile Phone Data To Track People
Back in November, the news broke on the Friday after Thanksgiving that the federal government routinely asked for and received information from mobile phone operators about the location of various mobile phones (effectively tracking their owners) without bothering to show any sort of probable cause. This should raise plenty of concern (especially combined with the warrantless wiretapping program), as it effectively would mean that if you own a mobile phone, you've given the gov't the freedom to figure out where you are at any moment in time with no probable cause.
The EFF and the ACLU filed Freedom of Information … [Link]
Planet Ubuntu » Daniel Holbach: Reminder: “Running Bug Jams” Sessions
Don’t forget! If you’re interested in participating in the Global Bug Jam with your team, it’s easy: just join the IRC Session either on July 4th or July 5th in #ubuntu-meeting
- Friday, July 4th 16:00 UTC with Caspar Clemens Mierau and myself
- Saturday, July 5th 19:00 UTC with Wolfger and Greg Grossmeier
These teams are on the list of heroes already: Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Perú, Chicago, Michigan (Detroit, Sault Ste. Marie), Maryland, Massachusetts, India, Berlin. Add your team to the list today.
–
My 5 today: # 244799, # 244921, # 244924, # …
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Planet Ubuntu » Emanuele Gentili: Rapache 0.4 is out!
I am plased to announce that rapache 0.4 is out. 
For those who doesn’t know Rapache (ra-pa-che), n. 1. a python + GTK tool that uses the SSH protocol (one day, still local right now) to manage and configure apache2 and all of its modules. GPL`d, Its goal is to provide the user with a simple interface to facilitate the work to those who want to set up a web-server in a few clicks. 2. Rapacious bird (italian: rapace)
What’s new in 0.4 version?
- Main window
- Edit window
- Modules support
MAIN WINDOW
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Planet Ubuntu » Jonathan Carter: Open Source Microblogging
I’ve joined in on the hype as well:
What the heck, even got a page on whoisi:
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Techdirt » Kia Decides That It No Longer Wants Its TV Commercials To Be Entertaining
For a while now, we've been pointing out how, for advertising to be effective, it also needs to be good content that people don't just "not mind" seeing, but which they're willing to actively seek out. It appears that automaker Kia has decided to go with the exact opposite strategy. Reader Brooks writes in to point us to the news that Kia’s new marketing director in the US doesn't want people entertained:
"We don't want to spend a good chunk of our time in a 30-second spot trying to entertain people."
That's part of his plan to move … [Link]
Planet Ubuntu NJ LoCo » Edward Corrado: Venezuela’s National Library evaluated, decided to deploy the Koha Integrated Library System
The way I read it, it isn’t a 100% done deal, but it appears Venezuela’s National Library is going to migrate to Koha. Big news for people in the Koha camp I would say! Here is the press release:
Venezuela’s National Library evaluated, decided to deploy
the Koha Integrated Library System
===================================~On the first half of 2008, Venezuela’s National Library
(BNV) evaluated the Koha ILS and other FLOSS-based
ILSs, together with a proprietary ILS, and decided to
deploy Koha in two phases for the Library’s catalogue,
which includes more than two million records, and the
National Public Library System. …
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Planet Ubuntu » Launchpad News: Launchpod episode 6: Greasemonkey scripts and LP developer interview
Launchpod: the Launchpad team podcast! The latest from the Launchpad developers, questions from Launchpad users and stories from people who’ve found Launchpad useful.
Hosts: Matthew Revell, Joey Stanford and Elliot Murphy.
Theme: Obscurity by Barry Warsaw.
This show was recorded before the Launchpad 1.2.6 roll-out.
- 00:56: About the bug page, distro page and translations page UI changes - give us your feedback on them!
- 04.10: Members of the Launchpad user community have developed Greasemonkey scripts to tweak Launchpad’s interface.
- 07.01: Launchpad developer Tom Berger talks about his work on the Launchpad bug tracker, the bug page UI …
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Planet Ubuntu NJ LoCo » Dave Harding: Pre-Borrow This Book
While surfing Amazon.com, you discover your favorite living author will publish a new book in a couple months. At this moment, if you were me, the pressure to click the pre-order button will strain your fiscal restraint. You don't need the book in hardcover; you don't feel like spending $20 on a book that might suck; but you don't want to forget about it, and you'd really like to read the book the same week all your friends do.
You might have an alternative to the pre-order button. My local library pre-orders books itself. As soon they order the …
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Techdirt » Social Engineering 101: Focus On Informal Conversations
In the past, we've covered plenty of stories about social engineering to get people to admit stuff they shouldn't — suggesting you really just need to ask people to give up personal info and they will (sometimes giving them a gift helps, but just asking alone will often do the trick). The latest study does go a little deeper, however, suggesting that the more informal the setting, the more likely people are to cough up info. For example, it found that when those asked for confidential information were promised that it wouldn't be misused they were less likely to hand … [Link]
Planet Ubuntu » Stephan Hermann: Project Leonov: Going forward
Leonov can now show branches which are eventually attached to a task report.
You can also visit the branch homepage, when you click on the bottom left button. I'm thinking about a good implementation tactic for "Checkout Branch" function. But most likely I'll postpone this to 0.0.3 or later…
Now for "New Report" functionality…
If you want to now, what bugs and what features will be implemented for the next milestone release, you can have a look at:
http://wiki.leonov.tv/LeonovMilestone/0.0.2
(it will take some time to fetch some remote bugs from lp…yay a new moinmoin macro which was written …
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fsdaily.com - Free Software News - Published news » The Six Kinds of Anti-FOSS Trolls
Since I wrote about the seven kinds of anti-Linux FUD pundits, it occurred to me that plain old forum and blog-comment trolls could be classified, too.
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Planet Ubuntu » Reinhard Tartler: ffmpeg-uploaded
Finally ffmpeg version 0.svn20080206-9 was uploaded to unstable and is currently waiting to get out of NEW . Special thanks go out to Fabian Greffrath, for testing, reviewing and pushing me, to Lïoc Minier, for his thoughts on the package renaming and handling of potential unstripped replacement packages and Darren Salt for his work on the debian/rules file. This upload is targeted lenny. Highlights of that upload include:
- introduction of ffmpeg-doc 438369
- build flavors (read more below)
- renaming of the source package to ffmpeg-debian
- DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noopt now compiles the package with -O0 (and works!)
- ffmpeg-config …
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Planet Ubuntu » Daniel Holbach: Unsoung Heroes… the Sponsoring Queue 3
I’m constantly amazed of what people in the Sponsorship Process get done on both sides: patch contributors and sponsors do amazing work to make Ubuntu better.
I talked to Iain Lane who has been doing some awesome work in the last months. He seems to be busy all day and night working on merges.
What has your sponsoring experience been like up until now?
I have found all of the sponsors I’ve worked with to be really quite helpful. Most of the time if I need some help or a sponsor has a comment on a change I’ve …
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Techdirt » If You Must Make A Hidden Camera, Don't Make It Look Like Garbage
Here's one for the "didn't quite think that through, did you" files. Gizmodo points us to the news that British authorities trying to prevent illegal trash dumping put a hidden camera at a popular dumping site. The only problem was that they disguised the hidden camera (which cost somewhere around $20,000 — I have no clue why it cost so much) as a trash bag, and neglected to tell the folks in charge of cleaning up the site. So, yes, they threw out the hidden camera. Whoops.
Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
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fsdaily.com - Free Software News - Published news » RMS and Clipperz Promoting Freedom In the Cloud
«Clipperz and Richard Stallman recently launched a joint call for action to bring freedom and privacy to web applications. [...] Clipperz and RMS urge web developers to adopt the new AGPL license and build their applications using a 'zero-knowledge architecture,' a framework for web services that has been derived from Clipperz online password manager.
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Ubuntu Weblogs » Stefano Forenza: Rapache by night
It’s been a while from the last post about Rapache. So I thought time has come to make our last progresses public.
For those who doesn’t know Rapache is a GTK utility that tries to ease the configuration of Apache on Debian alike systems.
This night was a long night :). It’s 6.48am here, so I’ll just get to the point: features ! 
Not so fast, baby !
- Thanks to Qense, Rapache now detects if Apache is not installed and refuses to run.
What’s new in the Main window
- Rapache now features two handy buttons, one …
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Planet Ubuntu » Fabián Rodríguez: Don’t disturb - this took me all night
That’s what the sign says in this picture:
Apparently Ubuntu-co rocked at Campus Party Colombia. If that picture is any indication, I think there’s more to come 
Well done to all that were there!
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Planet Ubuntu » Paul Hummer: Micro-Blogging, Web 2.0, and the Secret Sauce
I started writing this post last night after my wife fell asleep (a common occurrence). It was about Twitter, and why I twittered. The basic idea was that I enjoyed the micro-blogging because it was closer to a a real conversation than reading someone's blog and posting comments. It's more of a round table where you select who sits at your table. It was personal, and I enjoy that. I've strengthened already existing acquaintances, and created new ones. For something that initially seemed like such a novelty, it's become a great tool.
Then, this afternoon, after a 2+ hour outage of …
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fsdaily.com - Free Software News - Published news » Microkernels rule!
“The microkernel has an undeservedly bad reputation. It's time to take a second look…"
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Techdirt » UK Gov't Throws Open Data For Mashups; Offers Prize Money For Best Results
We were just complaining about the fact that governments should be exposing APIs on certain government data so that people can create more useful services out of them — and it appears that someone in the UK was having similar thoughts. The government is now opening up a bunch of data to whoever wants to play with it. Not only is the gov't encouraging people to make mash-ups with the data, it's actually offering cash prizes to those who come up with the best results. Nice to see a government doing something smart.
Permalink | Comments | Email This Story … [Link]
Ubuntu Pennsylvania Planet » IdleOne: USA vs. Canada
Being the worlds largest Super Power does not make you the brightest lightbulb in the tree or the ocean for that matter.
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Planet Ubuntu » Aaron Toponce: Identi.ca
Goodbye Twitter and your buggy service. Goodbye Jaiku and your spammy bot. Goodbye Pownce and your 20 users. Hello Identi.ca and Free Software. Reasons for switching to Identi.ca for my microblogging service:
- The code powering the service is Free Software, licensed under the GNU Affero GPL.
- Create an account and login to the account using OpenID
- Stable (so far) Jabber support
- Utilizes the Open Service Definition
Wait a minute. Rehash that list. Free Software, OpenID, Jabber and an Open Network Service. Sense what I’m sensing? Identi.ca is all about openness and freedom. Uh, yeah. Signed up, and ditched the other …
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Techdirt » Congress Close To Fixing Constitutional Loophole Over Patent Judge Appointments
While there was some interesting chatter around some reports back in April that the last eight years of patent appeals board judges may have been unconstitutional, as we noted at the time, the whole thing was really a very, very minor procedural point. Effectively, the constitution requires the Secretary of Commerce to make the appointments, but a change in the law in 2000 allowed the Patent Office director to make the appointments. Of course, the reality of the situation is that if the Commerce Secretary were making the appointments, he would almost certainly just rubberstamp the recommendations from the PTO … [Link]
Planet Ubuntu » Jono Bacon: Thanks
Wow. That is the only way of describing how we all feel in the LugRadio team regarding the response to Monday’s news that we are wrapping up LugRadio. I have been, in a word, stunned at the incredibly generous and kind comments that we have been receiving. It was incredible to see so many comments on that blog entry, as well as Aq’s write-up, the LugRadio forums thread that announced the news, and the mountain of email to the show email address.
I have read every one of those comments, posts and emails and I am stunned at the incredibly …
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Planet Ubuntu NJ LoCo » Edward Corrado: CATaC slides posted
I just posted the slides for the presentation I did with Heather L. Moulaison at the Sixth International Conference on Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology and Communication (CATaC) 2008 on my scholarly activities Web page. Emma Tonkin also co-authored the paper in the proceedings but unfortunately she couldn’t join us in France. I’ll write up a review of the conference in the next week or so. However, I will say at this point it was a fun conference with a lot of interesting people to meet. The citation for our presentation is:
Moulaison, Heather Lea, Emma Tonkin, & Edward M. Corrado (2008, …
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fsdaily.com - Free Software News - Published news » OpenMoko Neo Freerunner available for order July 4th
Last we heard form Openmoko, it was packing and shipping the open-source FreeRunner for an early July release. So, here we are in early July and wouldn't you know it, the FreeRunner will be available for order starting Friday, July 4 with shipping to begin on Monday, July 7. As for details, we got 'em.
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Planet Ubuntu » Eddie Martinez: Best Buy sucks at selling computers!
Here’s the run down of my visit to Best Buy today (555 W. Roosevelt, Chicago IL). I’m calling this store out directly and putting them on blast.
I walked into the store with my co-worker who needed a new laptop and head directly into the computer section. Obviously, I’m not an idiot, so I head straight to the specs and start checking out the various features, layouts, etc. Over the course of 20 minutes, I get asked if I need help all of 5 times, by 5 different people, but I’m pretty sure myself and my co-worker can handle this job. …
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Planet Ubuntu » Cody A.W. Somerville: And now we’re in July…
Wow. Time sure goes quickly. It has been a few weeks since my last blog post but there certainly hasn’t been a lack of things to blog about, just been super busy!
First off, I’m pretty proud to report that I’ve been able to fix a rather unfortunate regression in Xubuntu where when users logged in they’d sometimes (ie. it was an intermittent issue) just see a blue (or some other colour) screen and their mouse - nothing else would happen. This was being caused by a race condition resulting in a deadlock due to architectural issues in libxcb (which should …
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Techdirt » Blockbuster Looks At Circuit City's Books; Ditches Acquisition Offer
We were one of a very small number of people who actually saw some logic behind Blockbuster bidding for Circuit City — though, it seemed unlikely that Blockbuster viewed the purchase in the same way we did. Most people assumed (probably correctly) that Blockbuster didn't really have much of a plan at all, other than to merge the two struggling companies and have an even bigger mess on their hands. Blockbuster has now withdrawn the offer to buy Circuit City, gamely claiming that it has to do with "market conditions" and a better understanding of just how awful Circuit City's … [Link]
Planet Ubuntu » Timo Aaltonen: New libdrm/mesa/xorg-server/xorg shaping up
For the past few days I’ve been working on merging the latest upstream release of xorg-server (1.5rc5) for Intrepid, which happens to require the recently released libdrm 2.3.1 and mesa 7.1rc. Had to merge xorg as well and rebuild the drivers that I need (kbd, mouse, intel), since the video and input ABI’s have changed. The intel DRI driver has a couple of bugs that prevent compiz from working, but hopefully they are fixed in the not-too-distant-future…
Today I’ve been trying to get mesa to use the new autotoolized build system, and it’s starting to look good. For reasons unknown to …
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Planet Ubuntu » Debian Package of the Day: Debian-administration.org on rinetd
Unusual non-article ahead:
Debian-administration.org has a nice article about rinetd entitled “Easily forwarding arbitrary TCP connections with rinetd”, go and check it, it is an interesting package I didn’t know about!
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Techdirt » Missouri Makes Online Harassment A Felony
Laws passed as an emotional reaction to a tragic situation are almost always bad laws. The state of Missouri has signed into law a bill to make online harassment a felony. This is in response, of course, to the infamous "Lori Drew/Megan Meier" case that has received so much attention. Of course, when you look at the facts of the case, it's not even clear if this law would have mattered. Drew didn't set up the MySpace account to harass Meier, but to find out what she was saying about her daughter. The "harassing" messages were actually sent by another … [Link]
Planet Ubuntu » Nicolas Deschildre: Just for fun
From time to time, one of these guys pass by… Always makes me smile 
[21:37] tomjon (n=tomjon@xxx.xx) has joined #ubuntu-testing
[21:38] yo!
[21:38] <-- tomjon has quit (Client Quit)
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Techdirt » Court Says CD-ROMs Of Magazine Archives Don't Violate Copyrights Of Article Authors
There have been a series of lawsuits over the years concerning whether or not magazines could create CD-ROM archives of their magazines without having to pay all their freelance authors again. The court rulings have been mixed, to say the least — with some ruling one way, and others ruling the other. The end result was some rather twisted logic that suggested magazine publishers could republish magazines via CD-ROM, but only if they did so in an incredibly annoying fashion.
Why? The reasoning shows the twisted impact of copyright law, but here we go: basically, if the CD-ROM is just … [Link]
Ubuntu Weblogs » Markus Thielmann: Adobe updates Flash 10 Beta
Adobe updated the Linux Flash 10 Beta today.
Fortunately, they fixed the windowless mode, one nasty issue with the previous beta version.
Have a look at the new features and the list of fixed bugs of this release.
I updated my Personal Package Archive (PPA) accordingly. If you already added my PPA to your sources list, you'll get the updated flashplugin-nonfreebeta within the next upgrade.
Comments (1) :: del.icio.us :: digg :: stumpleupon
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Planet Ubuntu » Mathias Gug: Server Team 20080701 meeting minutes
Here are the minutes of the meeting. They can also be found online
with the irc logs here.
MIR for Recommends
mathiaz followed up on ubuntu-devel about MIR for Recommends. ScottK asked if there was a script to check for missing recommends in Main. cjwatson said he had almost implemented Recommends support in germinate.
mathiaz asked whether writing MIR for these packages is an easy task and could be given to new contributors. The MIR template lays out the steps and some of its points require packaging knowledge. cjwatson also noted that not all the packages should have MIR written …
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Planet Ubuntu » Jacob Peddicord: Identi.ca?
I was innocently minding my own business today, when all of a sudden I stared getting notices about identi.ca on Twitter. Judging by the activity over there, it seems there was a mass migration today.
So far, it seems okay in terms of speed (but who knows what will happen once more users find it) and is fairly simple. It is missing SMS, an API, and a bunch of Twitter features, but more important is that Jabber works. To top the whole thing off is that the entire service is released under the AGPL and uses OpenID.
I’m willing to see …
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