Linux News for Apr 23, 2009

• Open source challenges students to think (Apr 23, 2009, 23:02)
  ZDNet Asia: "The "open" characteristic of open source tools helps enhance, rather than complicate, the teaching process, say its exponents."


• Some new FUD about Linux and Oracle is floated (Oracle owns Linux) (Apr 23, 2009, 22:02)
  Groklaw: "Ah, no rest for me, as the FUD keeps on coming. Now there is a meme, echoed by none other than Rob Enderle, that much of the code in Linux belongs to Sun, and hence will soon be owned by Oracle, who will allegedly use that "power" to take over Linux:"


• Most Extensive Real-World Vulnerability Research (Apr 23, 2009, 21:07)
  Help Net Security: "Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys, today unveiled Laws of Vulnerabilities 2.0 derived from the industry’s largest vulnerability dataset."


• Easy Peasy V1.1 A Quick First Look (Apr 23, 2009, 20:46)
  Cooking With Linux: "I had to send my netbook, an Acer Aspire One, for repair after three months of use. The unit originally came with Windows XP, but had 1Gb of memory and a 160Gb hard drive, a configuration not available on Linux versions."


• SCO Motion for More Exclusivity Denied, the March MORs, and A Proposed Amicus in the Novell Appeal (Apr 23, 2009, 20:03)
  Groklaw: "The judge in the SCO bankruptcy has denied [PDF] SCO's motion to extend exclusivity. Surprise, surprise. The only way to grant it was to rewrite bankruptcy law, as I read it, so everyone else can file a reorganization plan now, if they wish to. I notice they are not falling over each other to do so yet. And SCO has finally filed its monthly operating reports for March."


• Big Herd of Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope Announcements (Apr 23, 2009, 19:33)
  Today is the day, the official release of Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope. Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Mythbuntu, and Ubuntu Server edition are also released today. Here is an assortment of news and release announcements.


• OpenSolaris, Linux could merge under Oracle (Apr 23, 2009, 19:33)
  LinuxWorld: "Oracle may end up merging the best of OpenSolaris with Linux once it takes control of Sun Microsystems, but it is unlikely to kill off Sun's widely used Solaris OS, analysts said."


• Free Desks and Chairs Anyone? (Apr 23, 2009, 19:03)
  Serverwatch: "You see, you don't really own the desk; you're simply purchasing a license to use the desk. Chairs are sold separately and we have the corner on the market for chairs that are 100 percent compatible with the desk. The chairs are also very expensive."


• The DD-WRT Controversy (Apr 23, 2009, 18:33)
  Wi-Fi Planet: "To some vocal critics, DD-WRT is betraying its open source roots, and possibly even violating the GPL--the GNU General Public License--under which the software is released."


• Fair Use, Turnitin, And... Why Google Never Should Have Caved On Book Scanning (Apr 23, 2009, 18:03)
  Techdirt: "Last year, we wrote about a district court decision that noted iParadigm's popular Turnitin plagiarism checker service wasn't violating copyright by adding every student's paper to its database, noting that this was fair use."


• Pirate Bay lawyer calls for retrial (Apr 23, 2009, 17:33)
  The Local: "A lawyer representing one of the men convicted in the Pirate Bay trial has called for a retrial after reports that the judge was a member of the same copyright protection organisations as several of the main entertainment industry representatives."


• Ulteo expands open source virtual desktop (Apr 23, 2009, 17:03)
  Netstat -vat: "Ulteo is out with a new release of its open virtual desktop (OVD) today that now enabled Windows as well as Linux applications."


• Who Owns Commercial Open Source � and Can Forks Work? (Apr 23, 2009, 16:33)
  Linux Journal: "Three years ago, Tom Foremski wrote an interesting piece called "Adapt or die--the choice facing the open source movement", which began: Can Larry Ellison be stopped? By which I mean could Oracle shut down the fledgling open-source software movement through a series of acquisition??"


• Linus on Linux: The Linus Torvalds Interview Part 1 (Apr 23, 2009, 16:03)
  Linux Magazine: "And though many things have changed greatly since 1991, one thing remains constant: Linus is still at the helm."


• Kickfire: Released for all the right reasons, but with the worst timing (Apr 23, 2009, 15:33)
  Tech Broiler: "I can only imagine the words out of Jonathan Schwartz's mouth to Kickfire's CEO, Bruce Armstrong: "Sorry partner, we just threw you under the bus.""


• Novell, Sun, and Red Hat: Three degrees of open source (Apr 23, 2009, 15:03)
  The Open Road: "Red Hat is an open-source company, while Novell is not, as Novell's CEO and CFO both emphasized in Novell's most recent earnings call. Sun, for its part, was desperately trying to reinvent itself as an open-source company, but struggled to do so given the weight of its declining hardware businesses."


• A Developer's Guide to Python 3.0: Standard Library (Apr 23, 2009, 14:33)
  DevX: "The previous articles in the series covered the most significant changes to the core language and type system and the basic data types in Python 3.0. This article covers the changes to the standard library."


• Handelsbanken Offers 21st Century Banking Services Using IBM and Red Hat Solutions (Apr 23, 2009, 14:03)
  Red Hat press release: "Handelsbanken, one of the four largest banks in the Nordic Area, has achieved strong business continuity, security and cost-efficiency results by deploying virtualization technology using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on System z servers and IBM System z operating system, z/OS. The bank's newly deployed technology solution will help maintain a highly resilient and secure network that scales based on business demands."


• The Future Of Computing Will Be Good Enough (Apr 23, 2009, 13:33)
  PC World: "Put simply, nobody wanted to upgrade. Everybody was happy with XP. Too happy, in fact, for Microsoft's business model to survive."


• Browser Plugins May Strip SELinux Protections (Apr 23, 2009, 13:03)
  Fedora Weekly News: "Daniel Walsh asked[1] why mozplugger[2] was being installed by default. He cautioned that mozplugger broke nsplugin and thus SELinux functionality. "


• Ubuntu 9.04: Nothing Short of Amazing (Apr 23, 2009, 12:33)
  IT News Today: "Is Ubuntu 9.04 worth the download? The answer is clear: DEFINITELY."


• Researchers Find Massive Botnet On Nearly 2 Million Infected Consumer, Business, Government PCs (Apr 23, 2009, 12:03)
  Dark Reading: "Researchers have discovered a major botnet operating out of the Ukraine that has infected 1.9 million machines, including large corporate and government PCs mainly in the U.S."


• Webopedia Terms of the Day (Apr 23, 2009, 10:33)
  Webopedia: Twittworking, Unified Computing System


• WiFi sharing service gains new Linux routers (Apr 23, 2009, 09:03)
  LinuxDevices: "Fon, which claims to offer the world's largest WiFi sharing community, has updated its Linux-based Fonera WiFi router with updated firmware and a new USB port. Like the earlier Fonera routers, the Fonera 2.0 offers both private and shareable WiFi signals, says the company."


• Intel Core i7 Virtualization On Linux (Apr 23, 2009, 07:33)
  Phoronix: "One area we had not looked at in the original article was the virtualization performance, but we are back today with Intel Core i7 920 Linux benchmarks when testing out the KVM hypervisor and Sun xVM VirtualBox. In this article we are providing a quick look at Intel's Nehalem virtualization performance on Linux."


• Music Notation Software for Linux: a Progress Report, Part 2 (Apr 23, 2009, 06:03)
  Linux Journal: "MuseScore-- In one sense, MuseScore is the "odd man out" in this article. It does not employ LilyPond in any way, but it does support MusicXML. That support gives it an entry into the LilyPond environment by way of LilyPond's musicxml2ly utility."


• Opinion: Microsoft still harming netbook markets (Apr 23, 2009, 04:33)
  Geek.com: "While the hardware is more than capable, the software is not. Seem odd? It is, but it's part of Microsoft's doing as they are imposing limitations on what hardware can run what operating system."


• PostgreSQL 8.4 goes into beta, ups performance (Apr 23, 2009, 03:03)
  ComputerWorld: "The PostgreSQL open source database project has released a beta of the upcoming version 8.4 release with a significant focus on performance improvements."


• Amazon and Wikipedia phactor Phorm out of the privacy equation (Apr 23, 2009, 01:33)
  IT Wire: "Even if the UK Government is not going to stop Phorm spying on Internet users on privacy grounds, it looks like some of the biggest brands on the Web will."


• Reverting to older kernel under Ubuntu (Apr 23, 2009, 00:03)
  Distrowatch Weekly News: "The recent release of Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 RC as an *.img file, a format easily transferable to any USB storage media, has quickly become my preferred operating system on the Eee PC and it has now replaced the original Xandros-built distribution on its internal solid state drives (SSD)."