Linux News for Apr 27, 2010

• How Cloud Computing Security Resembles the Financial Meltdown (Apr 27, 2010, 23:33)
  Datamation: "How do you know if a cloud computing vendor is secure? When they make claims about their nearly absolute level of safety, should you just...take their word for it? "


• The Complexities to Creating Real Electronic Health Records (Apr 27, 2010, 23:03)
  Linux Journal: "But with all of this focus on streamlining and digitally electrifying health records, I began to wonder where did the Open Source community stand and where is its input? There is certainly a lot of money sitting out there for someone who wants to try to build the better mouse trap."


• New Nvidia Video Driver for Linux Supports X Server 1.8 (Apr 27, 2010, 22:33)
  Softpedia: "Nvidia announced a few days ago, on its forum, a new version of its proprietary driver for the Nvidia graphics cards. Nvidia 195.36.24 adds support for new GPUs, and fixes a few issues. But the most important thing is that Nvidia 195.36.24 has support for X Server 1.8."


• Say Cheese: Building a Photo App for Your Android Device (Apr 27, 2010, 22:03)
  Linux Magazine: "Learn how to snap a picture and display it in your application "


• Dilbert: That Lost 4G Phone (Apr 27, 2010, 21:33)
  Scott Adams blog: "So here now, exclusively for you blog readers, the totally unfinished first drafts of those comics. You will never see these in newspapers."


• Computers Seized at Home of Gizmodo Reporter Who Wrote About iPhone, Gawker Media Says (Apr 27, 2010, 21:17)
  New York Times: "Under both state and federal law, a search warrant may not be validly issued to confiscate the property of a journalist"


• Raiders of the Lost iPhone (Apr 27, 2010, 21:03)
  MacNewsWorld: "Will Gizmodo's Jason Chen land in the cooler for his part in leaking Apple's next-gen iPhone to the world? Or did Silicon Valley's High Tech Task Force violate legal protections established to shield journalists when they raided the editor's home?"


• Most Influential Women in Technology 2010: Pamela Jones (Apr 27, 2010, 20:33)
  Fast Company: "Groklaw is an attempt to get geeks and lawyers together, so they can help each other understand the other's world, with the goal of ideally getting better court results based on technical realities"


• Ubuntu 10.04: Where Ubuntu goes from here (Apr 27, 2010, 20:03)
  Cyber Cynic: "The new Ubuntu release is almost here and I like the Ubuntu 10.04 desktop a lot. As a Linux expert, it's a little too simple for my personal tastes, but it's the best beginner Linux out of the box I've ever seen."


• 3 KDE Add-ons Worth Trying (Apr 27, 2010, 19:33)
  MakeTechEasier: "Ever so often, I look around for rather random add-ons that make my desktop experience more pleasant or occasionally even serve a meaningful purpose. They range from full applications to very basic widgets. In no particular order, here are a few that I have recently encountered and are worth mentioning."


• Linux Takes a Share of Spam from Windows (Apr 27, 2010, 19:03)
  Symantec press release: "In the current spam climate, this index shows that relative to its market share, any given Linux machine is five times more likely to be sending spam than any given Windows machine."


• Cross Compiling Options (Apr 27, 2010, 18:33)
  Linux Journal: "What is your strategy on cross compilation toolchains? Here we explore a few options:"


• New distributions added to waiting list (Apr 27, 2010, 18:03)
  Distrowatch: "GnackTrack. GnackTrack is an Ubuntu-based distribution and live CD designed for penetration testing."


• Top 10 technology mistakes (Apr 27, 2010, 17:33)
  PC Authority: "From the Mars Climate Orbiter to overheating batteries and floating point errors, we look at the history of famous technical mistakes"


• X.Org Project Has Five New Summer Projects (Apr 27, 2010, 17:03)
  Phoronix: "Back in March we talked about the possible X.Org projects this year during Google's Summer of Code, for which X.Org is a veteran participant (in the past items like the ATI R300 Gallium3D driver and generic GPU video decoding have been tackled), but the list of accepted projects for this summer have now been announced."


• EasyPeasy and the Challenges of Linux Netbook Design (Apr 27, 2010, 16:33)
  Datamation: "Should a netbook be treated as more as a mobile device than as a laptop? Should developers assume that netbooks are used for light computing such as social networking, rather than for productivity?"


• Canonical announces an Ubuntu certification scheme (Apr 27, 2010, 16:03)
  The H Open: "The joint programme with the LPI had been very successful, but there was great demand for a pure Ubuntu certification."


• How to Use KDE�s Clipboard and Klipper App (Apr 27, 2010, 15:33)
  MakeTechEasier: "KDE has an advanced clipboard system, largely due to a small program called Klipper, which can store more than one piece of data. KDE also has the ability to copy and move files with copying and pasting, and automatic creation of files using clipboard data."


• The Ultimate Tar Command Tutorial with 10 Practical Examples (Apr 27, 2010, 15:03)
  The Geek Stuff: "In this article, let us review various tar examples including how to create tar archives (with gzip and bzip compression), extract a single file or directory, view tar archive contents, validate the integrity of tar archives, finding out the difference between tar archive and file system, estimate the size of the tar archives before creating it"


• Keeping 1000 devs focused: new Debian leader speaks (Apr 27, 2010, 14:33)
  IT Wire: "Ten days back, the new leader of the Debian GNU/Linux project, Stefano Zacchiroli, began his term as the only elected leader of a free software project. But that's not the only thing that makes Debian unique in the FOSS space."


• Speak to us, oh great and wise computer (Apr 27, 2010, 14:03)
  Motho ke motho ka botho: "In the category of "silly tricks that you can do at the console that don't really make any progress but are kind of fun anyway," here are two things you might not normally combine: the fortune package inherited from the Unix of Long Ago, and the espeak tool."


• Gazing at Scientific Linux (Apr 27, 2010, 13:33)
  Distrowatch: "Apparently several readers find Scientific a good OS for their machines at home and run it on everything from servers, to desktops, to netbooks.... everything except the family toaster. Honestly, I was a bit surprised."


• Vancouver City Hall's Open Data Experiment (Apr 27, 2010, 13:03)
  The Tyee: "The transparency push is a year old and working, but you can't call it wide open, yet."


• Linux Mint 9: Desktop backgrounds (Apr 27, 2010, 12:33)
  The Linux Mint Blog: "I'm posting about the artwork again to follow-up on the contest and the desktop backgrounds for Linux Mint 9. Wallpapers included by default: The following wallpapers will be included by default in Linux Mint 9 (click on the pictures to see them in full size)."


• An Eye-Opening Experience (Apr 27, 2010, 12:03)
  The Linux Critic: "Recently, I was able to get outside the circle of Linux users and perform a live demonstration of Linux (and LXDE) to a group of professionals in a conference setting. Here's my story."


• Setting Up Tunneling With a VirtualBox Guest Machine (Apr 27, 2010, 10:33)
  Serverwatch: "I regularly use VirtualBox, which allows you to set up and run virtual machines (VMs) on your own desktop. It's a very nifty bit of software, but one drawback is that by default, the guest VM is invisible to the host or any other machines on the network."


• 6 of the Best Free Linux Simple Backup Software (Apr 27, 2010, 09:03)
  LinuxLinks: "Now, let's explore the 6 backup tools at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, providing a screenshot of the software in action, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources and reviews."


• Google Nixes Verizon Edition of Nexus One (Apr 27, 2010, 07:33)
  EnterpriseMobile Today: "Google has quietly canceled plans to release a Verizon version of its Nexus One phone and is instead steering customers toward the HTC Incredible, a phone described as a "Nexus One on steroids" by one analyst."


• The case of the overly anonymous anon_vma (Apr 27, 2010, 06:03)
  LWN.net: "The holdup in this case was a nasty regression which occupied a number of kernel developers nearly full time for days. The hunt for this bug is a classic story of what can happen when the code gets too complex."


• Git 1.7.1 released and available in my repository for Ubuntu Jaunty and Ubuntu K (Apr 27, 2010, 04:33)
  My Thoughts: "Git 1.7.1 was released on Saturday, 24 Apr 2010. It's available in my Ubuntu repository for Ubuntu Jaunty and Ubuntu Karmic."


• Free NVIDIA Fermi Cards To Open-Source Developers (Apr 27, 2010, 03:03)
  Phoronix: "Prior to launching their next-generation graphics processors, NVIDIA dropped their obfuscated open-source driver and have said they will not provide any open-source support at all for their GeForce GTX 400 "Fermi" series..."


• Using graphical su in Fedora (Apr 27, 2010, 01:33)
  Ian's Thoughts: "There are times that I would like to open an app as root user without having to use the command line in order to do that. I learned of a nice app in the Fedora repos called beesu..."


• Why Making Money from Free Software Matters (Apr 27, 2010, 00:03)
  The H Open: "Later still, free software also became a way of making serious money – something that Stallman has repeatedly said he is quite happy with, contrary to much FUD claiming otherwise."