by Michael Arrington on November 29, 2008

Three Reasons Why Netbooks Just Aren't Good Enough

The debate about Netbooks, which are very small and very cheap laptop devices, is beginning to heat up. The category is only about a year old but sales are expected to top 5 million this year.

Lots of people think Netbooks are the next big volume market because they allow people who previously couldn't afford computers to own one. People got so bullish on the devices that sales projections reached 50 million units by 2012.

I've had a chance to test many of the units, though, and I can say that the promise is much bigger than the payoff. Perhaps that's why Intel is rethinking whether the devices are as great as everyone's expectations.

A typical Netbook has a 7 inch screen, an Intel Atom or Via Nano processor, a solid state (flash) hard drive and a keyboard that's 80-85% standard size. Most have Wifi. Some have other bells and whistles like bluetooth, a camera, etc.

I find Netbooks unusable for three reasons: they're underpowered as PCs, the screen is too small for web surfing, and the keyboard is so small that effective typing is impossible.

The basic problem as I see it: Netbooks are designed to appeal to two very different markets - the price sensitive and the size sensitive. The two are really mutually exclusive.

Full story

Blurring of MVC lines: Programming the Web Browser.

Posted 27 Nov 2008 at 17:06 UTC (updated 28 Nov 2008 at 17:33 UTC)

When HTML first came out, browsers could have been called "Application Thin Clients", if the buzzword had been in use at the time. The introduction of javascript made it possible to execute code on the client, and this turned browsers into something much more than just a "display" mechanism.

Before Javascript, Web application development was simple: everything was done server-side. The concept of MVC - Model View Controller - was easy: the HTML was generated, and that was the view. With Javascript being a full-blown programming language, the lines are being blurred between which code is responsible for the View, the Controller and even the Model. The resultant split of responsibility across client and server in wildly diverse programming languages is driving many developers to alternative technologies such as Flash, and causing headaches for those Web developers who remain.

The key components of the solution - to allow the developer to create MVC applications in a single programming language, where at least the "View" source is extracted and compiled to Javascript and HTML - actually exist and are used in production environments, thanks to Google Web Toolkit and Pyjamas. RubyJS is well on the way, too.

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Intel rethinks Netbooks: 'Fine for an hour' but...

Posted by Brooke Crothers

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The Netbook, take two: When Advanced Micro Devices said it wasn't going to focus on Netbooks, as Intel and its partners defined them, maybe it was on to something.

Intel is re-evaluating the Netbook market as possibly not The Next Big Thing. This from the company that makes the Atom processor and accompanying silicon that go into most of the Netbooks sold today.

At a recent Raymond James IT Supply Chain Conference (streamed via this Intel page), Stu Pann, vice president in the sales and marketing group at Intel, said his company sees the Netbook differently now.

"We originally thought Netbooks would be for emerging markets and younger kids, and there is some of that. It turns out the bulk of the Netbooks sold today are Western Europe, North America, and for people who just want to grab and go with a notebook," Pann said. "We view the Netbook as mostly incremental to our total available market," he added.

And the most revealing statement? "If you've ever used a Netbook and used a 10-inch screen size--it's fine for an hour. It's not something you're going to use day in and day out."

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Development Release: openSUSE 11.1 RC 1 Now Available

Thursday, November 27th, 2008 by Joe Brockmeier

The openSUSE Project is happy to announce that openSUSE 11.1 RC 1 is now available. If all goes well, this will be the last testing release before the final 11.1 public release on December 18th.

This release includes a number of bugfixes and changes since 11.1 beta 5, as well as a new license.

Call for Testing

We all want openSUSE 11.1 to be the best release yet, and we need your help to get there. This release is ready for widespread testing, and we're encouraging everyone to download and work with the testing releases to find any critical bugs before release. Please run the release through your usual routine, and let us know about any bugs or other issues that you find.

Remember that this is a release candidate, and is not suitable for use on production systems, however. Though many openSUSE users can and do use the Factory distribution and/or testing releases for day-to-day work we want to stress that it's entirely possible that you will encounter serious bugs.

See openSUSE.org/Testing for more information on Testing.

To follow the testing and development process, we suggest that you subscribe to the openSUSE-Factory mailing list, and join the #openSUSE-Factory channel on Freenode to discuss openSUSE development.

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My counterpart and good friend Tim Patterson has put together some persuasive arguments in the past about  the relationship which was struck two years ago between Novell/SUSE and Microsoft, specifically, the Covenant and Interoperability aspects of their accord.  I respect his points of view but submit that Novell has charted the right course in terms of their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders and FOSS and inclusion of key openSUSE members in their governance decision making process.

The other day, I highlighted, openSUSE Sports a New License (Ding dong, the EULA's dead...), which Tim dutifully 'peppered' with his comments (I can always count on Tim to speak his mind on the most important of FOSS topics) to which I replied with my assessment of Novell's position going forward:

Tim_Patterson | 22 hours ago The FOSS community at large is understandably 'miffed' with the set of events and current relationship between MS and Novell.

I say, it is 'business as usual' at Novell and MS is just tagging along for the ride in their usual 'opportunistic' way.

So, don't fear the SUSE Lizard FOSS patriots!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

--Dietrich

KDE 4.2 Beta 1 Release Announcement

November 26, 2008.

The KDE Community today announced the immediate availability of "Caterpillar", (a.k.a KDE 4.2 Beta 1), the first testing release of the new KDE 4.2 desktop. Caterpillar is aimed at testers and reviewers. It should provide a solid ground to report bugs that need to be tackled before KDE 4.2.0 is released. Reviewers can use this beta to get a first look at the upcoming KDE 4.2 desktop which provides significant improvements all over the desktop and applications.
With 885 bugs closed in the past week, the KDE community is now in bugfixing mode in order to provide a smooth KDE 4.2.0 to end users in January.

Significant refinements of Plasma and KWin, the KDE workspace

For the 4.2 release, the KDE team has fixed literally thousands of bugs and has implemented dozens of features that were missing until now in KDE 4. 2 fixes your issues. This beta release gives you the opportunity to assist in ironing out the remaining wrinkles. The KDE release team has put together a list with the most significant improvements in 4.2 Beta 1:

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"Contrast that with Free Software. By its nature Free Software is ethical: it is completely open, nothing is hidden, there are no sneaky backdoors, spyware, rootkits, or any of the other vile crimes-that-are-not-punished perpetrated by commercial software vendors. Nobody goes to jail for exposing flaws or talking about how the technology works. There are no EULAs or NDAs. There is little closed-door plotting; most discussions are out in the open for anyone to see, or even participate in. That is why people like me get so impatient with the demands to make Linux more friendly to closed-source proprietary software-- it is fundamentally opposed to what Free Software is all about. It's like saying that a little toxic waste in the water is OK, a little more air pollution isn't a problem because it's 90% pure, and only zealots and purists want 100%."

Read More...

openSUSE Sports a New License (Ding dong, the EULA's dead...)

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 by Zonker

Just in time for openSUSE 11.1 RC 1, we've finished the new and improved license for openSUSE 11.1. The days of agreeing to a EULA for openSUSE are over!

The text of the new license is included on the wiki, but the highlights are:

• Users no longer need to agree to the license. This is not a EULA, it's a license notice. We want you to be aware of your rights as provided by the FOSS licenses, so we'll display this notice but not require an agreement.
• openSUSE is an aggregate work including many open source and free software packages. The aggregate work is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2, individual packages are governed by their respective licenses.
• The main DVD now includes only the software that we can redistribute freely and that you can redistribute freely.

We want to make sure that openSUSE is the easiest Linux to obtain and use -- and a big chunk of that is licensing. We now have a license that presents no obstacle to redistribution, and no obstacle for modification.

We are also working on trademark guidelines that clarify how and when the openSUSE marks can be used, and we'll be releasing those shortly.

The work we've done on the openSUSE Build Service and the openSUSE license is all about making it easy to redistribute openSUSE: Either as-is, or modified to suit your needs. Want to ship an Xfce or KDE 3.5 live CD? We want to make that easy. Want to use openSUSE for another project that we haven't thought of? Again - we want you to, and we want to make it easy! (And, of course, we want you to have a lot of fun while you're doing this -- though our lawyers tell us that's not legally enforceable.)

You may notice similarities between our license and Fedora's. We have based our license on the license notice that is being used by the Fedora Project. We did this for a few reasons, primarily because we didn't see any point in reinventing the wheel -- Fedora's license has worked for them, and there's no reason it wouldn't work for us. Reuse is one of the strengths of our community, after all.

We also "borrowed" Fedora's license because they freely offered it, and because it also meets our needs. I'd like to thank Fedora Project Leader Paul Frields for providing assistance while we were working on this process.

We also want to thank Novell's crack legal team for putting in the time on this. While we wound up working with an existing license, we took the long way to get there -- trying to modify the previous EULA to be more friendly, coming up with ideas to create a license from scratch. As a suggestion to other projects -- we'd recommend looking at existing license notices as well, rather than trying to come up with a brand new one.

We're happy to say that you'll be able to enjoy openSUSE 11.1's final release without agreeing to any license at all. We will display our license notice, but it is just that, a notice. The EULA is dead, long live the new and improved license notice!

Full story

IETF committee calls for a simple system for DNS security

24.11.2008 12:46

The Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the central committee of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF, a standards organisation), is calling for a simple system for signing the DNS root zone, and for the interest groups of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to be given a say in a number of operational questions. That would give the ICANN community an influence on, say, the continuous rollover of keys for signing the root zone. The IAB makes these requests in its feedback to a Notice of Inquiry from the US National Telecommunications and Information Agency (NTIA). It also calls for caution: "Care should be taken that DNSSEC deployment remains about data, integrity, and authenticity, and not about control."

The way the root zone should be signed has been a topic of serious debate for almost two years. This is the IAB's feedback in response to a Notice of Inquiry from the NTIA regarding "Enhancing the Security and Stability of the Internet's Domain Name And Addressing System" with DNSSEC. The IAB writes that the IETF's DNS Security Extension (DNSSEC) protocol "is the only standards-track mechanism to prevent corruption and replacement of the DNS data on its path through the Internet" (See also: RFC 4033 DNS Security Introduction and Requirements). If correctly implemented, therefore, the protocol could ensure more trust in the network. The IAB believes in particular that phishing attacks and the vulnerabilities discovered by Dan Kaminsky can be prevented.

Bilski - What It Means, Part 5 (Conclusion) -- What About Microsoft's Patent Threats?

Monday, November 24 2008 @ 02:48 AM EST

Let's conclude our series of articles on In Re Bilski by looking at what the ruling may mean for Microsoft's threats against Linux. We can start by figuring out what kinds of patents Microsoft might think it owns. We've already seen that Microsoft acknowledged in its amicus brief that it owns "process patents", which is the category that the ruling was addressing, and by submitting the brief, clearly Microsoft thought Bilski could impact its software portfolio. When the ruling first issued, you'll recall patent lawyer Gene Quinn immediately wrote that it was bad news for Microsoft, that "much of the Microsoft patent portfolio has gone up in smoke" because, as Quinn's partner John White pointed out to him, "Microsoft doesn't make machines." Not just Microsoft. His analysis was that many software patents that had issued prior to Bilski, depending on how they were drafted, "are almost certainly now worthless." Much of Microsoft's portfolio, then, must be process patents. He was not the only attorney to think about Microsoft in writing about Bilski. A tax attorney, Linda M. Beale, in an article on the blog, A Taxing Matter, wrote about the effect of Bilski on State Street and on Microsoft: There remains much to be determined about the meaning of the Bilski decision (about which I will write more on a future posting). The court did not completely overrule State Street, leaving it unclear what the "tied to a particular machine" language may encompass. As the Nixon Peabody blog post illustrates, the decision will likely lead to a change in the way patent applications are framed (attempting to claim a requirement for computerization, for example, or emphasizing the "transformative" nature of the process described in the patent application). Suffice it to say for now that this will undoubtedly have an immediate impact on businesses, especially those that have taken out a large number of business method patents for proprietary computer programs. (It has been suggested that Microsoft has patented an entire arsenal of business methods since the State Street decision. See, e.g., this post.) It is likely that a substantial number of business method process patents that have been obtained since State Street would not qualify under the BilskiState Street process itself.  What is that saying? I read it as saying that a lot of weak patents just got weaker, if not overturned completely. Do you not read it that way? So what does that mean for the threats against Linux? Red Hat VP and Assistant General Counsel Rob Tiller writes: In its new opinion, the court declined to settle the issue of when, if ever, software based inventions should be patentable. Even so, the new test in Bilski will probably limit the patentability of software. Future cases will shed further light on this issue. In the meantime, the holder of a poor quality software patent is likely to think more carefully about bringing a lawsuit, because the patent may be ruled invalid.

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IBM Introduces Ready-to-Use Cloud Computing

Armonk, N.Y. and Shanghai, China - 15 Nov 2007: In Shanghai today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) unveiled plans for "Blue Cloud," a series of cloud computing offerings that will allow corporate data centers to operate more like the Internet by enabling computing across a distributed, globally accessible fabric of resources, rather than on local machines or remote server farms.

Blue Cloud, built on IBM's expertise in leading massive-scale computing initiatives, will be based on open standards and open source software supported by IBM software, systems technology and services.  IBM announced today that its Blue Cloud development is supported by more than 200 IBM Internet-scale researchers worldwide and targets clients who want to explore the extreme scale of cloud computing infrastructures quickly and easily.

IBM is currently collaborating on cloud computing initiatives with select corporations, universities, Internet-based enterprises and government agencies, including the Vietnamese Ministry of Science and Technology, which this week announced a cloud computing project with IBM.

IBM's first Blue Cloud offerings are expected to be available to customers in the spring of 2008, supporting systems with Power and x86 processors.  At an event in Shanghai today, IBM demonstrated how cloud computing technologies, running on IBM BladeCenters with Power and x86 processors and Tivoli service management software, dynamically provision and allocate resources as workloads fluctuate for an application.  IBM also expects to offer a System z "mainframe" cloud environment in 2008, taking advantage of very large number of virtual machines supported by System z. IBM also plans to offer a cloud environment based on highly dense rack clusters.

Blue Cloud - based on IBM's Almaden Research Center cloud infrastructure -- will include Xen and PowerVM virtualized Linux operating system images and Hadoop parallel workload scheduling.   Blue Cloud is supported by IBM Tivoli software that manages servers to ensure optimal performance based on demand. This includes software that is capable of instantly provisioning resources across multiple servers to provide users with a seamless experience that speeds performance and ensures reliability even under the most demanding situations. Tivoli monitoring checks the health of the provisioned servers and makes sure they meet service level agreements.

"Blue Cloud will help our customers quickly establish a cloud computing environment to test and prototype Web 2.0 applications within their enterprise environment," said Rod Adkins, Senior Vice President, Development and Manufacturing for IBM Systems & Technology Group. "Over time, this approach could help IT managers dramatically reduce the complexities and costs of managing scale-out infrastructures whose demands fluctuate."

Press Release

Samsung demos amazing folding phone

A video has appeared online of what's claimed to be an OLED display able to fold itself in half to become a mobile phone.

Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com

Initially, the phone - which it's thought was recently seen on a Samsung stand at a display tech trade show in Japan - looks more like a portable media player because of its large - 5in or so - display.

But suddenly the phone automatically folds itself in half, revealing a secondary - yet much smaller - screen on the opposite side. After a few seconds the device then opens itself up again.

When closed, a Samsung emblem can clearly be seen underneath the smaller screen. A menu of icons can be seen on the smaller screen, suggesting the front panel is touch-sensitive. What appear to be the usual call make and break buttons are also built into the unit's front.

Full story

Dell adds $100 32GB SSD option to Inspiron Mini 9

by Darren Murph, posted Nov 23rd 2008 at 7:34PM

Sure, the base price of Dell's Inspiron Mini 9 is pretty palatable, but good luck passing through that hard drive selection screen with this option unchecked. Yep, as now, Mini 9 buyers can opt for a capacious 32GB solid state drive (a luxury already available in Japan), which is a $100 upgrade over the standard 4GB SSD. Enticing enough to make you finally pull the trigger?

Original story

US warned of China 'cyber-spying'

There are concerns that China has been accessing sensitive US databases

China has stepped up computer espionage against the US government and American businesses, according to an influential Washington congressional panel.

In its annual report to Congress, the panel warned that China was gaining increasing access to sensitive information from US computer networks.

It said China was aggressively pursuing cyber-warfare capabilities to gain an advantage over the US in any conflict.

There has been no comment so far from the Chinese on the report.

The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission was set up by Congress in 2000 to advise, investigate and report on US-China issues.

China is stealing vast amounts of sensitive information from US computer networks Larry Wortzel Commission chairman

It alleges that the Chinese are looking for diplomatic and military secrets in government databases, and potentially lucrative industrial secrets held by American corporations.

The report said the US government and economy were critically vulnerable to cyber-space attack since both depended heavily on computers and the internet.

The panel of six Democrats and six Republicans said China would continue to target the US using cyberspace as it was cheaper and less risky than traditional espionage activities.

Full story

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Folks, take it from Me and Tim, the "N'er do Wells" are out there 'knocking on the door' every day. Take the maximum of protection measures possible on your DMZ and external Web Servers.  Here's a link to additional 'rate limiting' I have in place which has effectively brought the ssh 'brute force' attacks to a screeching halt.

Be Safe!
--Dietrich

Microsoft and Novell Mark Two Years of Interoperability Progress

Strong customer demand, technical collaboration and commercial success affirms strategy and partner model.

REDMOND, Wash., and WALTHAM, Mass. Nov. 18, 2008

-- Marking the two-year anniversary of their agreement to build a bridge between SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Windows, Microsoft Corp. and Novell, Inc., today are celebrating strong customer demand for their business model and strategy that provides interoperability and intellectual property (IP) peace of mind. The companies are announcing two significant milestones resulting from the Microsoft and Novell technical collaboration: the coming availability of an Advanced Management Pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 and a free beta download of Novell's Moonlight rich media application. The companies are also reinforcing the fact that Novell's new SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Subscription with Expanded Support program will be supported through Microsoft's sale of certificates for Novell service.

"Customer interest and uptake has far exceeded our expectations," said Susan Heystee, general manager for global strategic alliances at Novell. "This continued momentum from our strategic relationship with Microsoft is the catalyst driving the innovative solutions and technologies our two companies are announcing today. We're seeing especially strong demand in the datacenter, where a mixed-source environment is increasingly the norm and where our delivery of true interoperability is compelling."

In the second year of their business collaboration agreement, Microsoft and Novell have added more than 200 new joint customers, including Alticor Inc., BP Oil International Ltd. and China Mobile Ltd., which are receiving certificates from Microsoft for three-year priority support subscriptions for Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. When the five-year agreement was signed in November 2006, Microsoft purchased certificates to sell to customers, which then redeemed those certificates with Novell for a subscription to SUSE Linux Enterprise. In the first two years of the agreement, Novell has invoiced more than 70 percent of the original certificate purchase.

"The interoperability and IP peace of mind that our agreement provides is clearly resonating with customers," said Susan Hauser, general manager of strategic partnerships and licensing at Microsoft. "After two highly successful years, we've demonstrated that our business model works, and we will continue collaborating to provide innovative solutions for our customers. And with our sale of certificates for Novell's new Expanded Support program, even more customers, including those running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, will be able to access the benefits of our relationship with Novell."

As part of today's announcement, Microsoft and Novell are revealing the details of two new offerings resulting from the joint technical collaboration. Novell is announcing the general availability release of its Advanced Management Pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, available in the first half of 2009. A technical preview of the Advanced Management Pack was shown earlier this month at the Tech•Ed EMEA IT Professionals 2008 conference in Barcelona, Spain. The timing of the Advanced Management Pack coincides with the release of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, also slated for release in the first half of 2009. Microsoft and Novell's collaborative work in systems management aims to ease customers' management of mixed IT environments.

The Advanced Management Pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 extends the cross-platform Linux monitoring capability of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 and enables the assessment and management of Windows- and Linux-based servers from a single, unified console, eliminating the costs and complexities of having multiple management consoles. It also reduces training costs and optimizes staff resources, because individuals need to be trained on only one management tool. In addition, one team can manage both Windows and Linux environments.

The other new initiative the companies are announcing is the upcoming beta availability of Moonlight, an open source implementation of Microsoft Silverlight that provides Linux-based users with the same rich, high-definition media capabilities currently available for the Windows and Apple environments. Moonlight will be provided as an open source plug-in for the Firefox Web browser.

In the two years since signing their original business and technical collaboration agreement, Novell and Microsoft have continued to make significant investments in their relationship. Novell's Expanded Support program includes a three-year subscription to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server that also allows customers to transition to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server over a two-year period while receiving technical support for their existing Linux deployments. Based on its strong relationship with Novell, which is built on a commitment to meeting customer demand, Microsoft is supporting the new program through the sale of certificates for Novell technical support. As a result, even more customers will be able to access the benefits of interoperability and IP peace of mind provided through the Microsoft and Novell relationship.

Reseller distributors for the two companies are quick to point out the advantages of the Microsoft and Novell business model.

"The cooperation between Microsoft and Novell to deliver expanded support for SUSE Linux Enterprise users is a breath of fresh air," said Joe Szalkiewicz, western region vice president for The Pinnacle Group. "The ability to transition from other Linux deployments, including Red Hat, while redeeming subscription certificates purchased from Microsoft for Novell's Expanded Support, is remarkable -- something you can't get anywhere else. This is exactly what our customers have told us they are looking for to help make the transition from other forms of Linux to Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server."

Independent Television PLC (ITV), a public service network of British commercial television broadcasters, also was quick to express support for the new offering.

"At ITV we are increasingly standardizing on both Microsoft Windows Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as the key components of our enterprise server strategy," said Nick Leake, director of operations and infrastructure for ITV. "We did not want to get into a situation where we had a huge variety of different Linux distributions installed as we wanted to minimize our Linux operational risks and costs by standardizing on just one widely supported distribution. The Microsoft and Novell partnership agreement means we can now concentrate on Microsoft Windows Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server across our enterprise and have greater assurance that these platforms will be optimized to interoperate with each other, particularly in respect of virtualization. The additional intellectual property warranties provided by the agreement are a bonus and contribute to the effective positioning of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as an enterprise-class Linux distribution. The recent extension of the agreement shows this was not a one-off transaction but is part of a longer-term arrangement between both Microsoft and Novell. Long may it continue, as it is setting the new benchmark in the technology industry that other suppliers must now work to meet."

More information about the Microsoft and Novell agreement can be found at http://www.moreinterop.com.

Original story

Why Google Must Die

It's called SEO--search engine optimization--and it's pretty much all anyone working with Web sites ever talks about nowadays. You may think it consists of ways to trick the search engines, Google in particular, into giving you higher than usual page rankings. But in fact, it centers around the idea that Google sucks so much that companies think they need to use SEO to get the results they deserve.

By reverse-engineering the way Google operates, SEO experts can see how the process works. From a user's perspective, once you learn how Google does what it does, it's a miracle that you ever get the right results. And from my experience, the right results in many circumstances are nearly impossible to obtain--and may never be obtainable in the future.

Let's look at some of the problems that have developed over the years.

Inability to identify a home site. All the search engines have this habit, but often it is laughable. You'd think that if I were looking for Art Jenkins, and Art Jenkins had a Web site named Artjenkins.com, search engines would list that first, right? Most often this page is never listed anywhere.

Too much commerce, not enough information. There seems to be an underlying belief, especially at Google, that the only reason you go online is to buy something. People merely looking for information are a nuisance. This is made apparent anytime you look for information about a popular product. All you find are sites trying to sell you the product. Hey, here's a challenge: Ask Google to find you a site that honestly compares cell-phone plans and tells you which is best. Try it! All you get are thousands of sites with fake comparisons promoting something they are selling.

What's particularly bad about this is that the few honest sites trying to present information without SEO and all the trickery needed to get attention are put out of business; nobody ever finds those sites. The site you are pointed to should be the best site, not a mediocre popular site. This is the biggest flaw with page ranking.

Parked sites. Have you ever gone to look for something and found what seems like the perfect site near the top of the Google results? You click on it only to find one of those fake "parked" sites, where people park domain names, pack them with links to other sites, and hope for random clicks that pay them 10 cents each. How does page ranking, if it works, ever manage to give these bogus sites a high number?

Unrepeatable search results. Ever run a search a week later and get completely different results? In the end, you have to use the search history and hope you can find it. Can things change so drastically day-to-day that the search results vary to an extreme month-to-month? This is compounded by the weird results you get when you are logged in to Google. These are somehow customized for you? In what way?

Google sign-in changes a query's results to an extreme with no discernible benefit. Often two people are on a call trying to discuss something and both will try finding something online. The conversation often goes like this: "Here it is, I found it. Type in the search term 'ABCD Fix' and it's the fourth result listed." "I don't see it. The fourth one down is a pill company." "You typed in ABCD Fix, right?" "Yeah." This goes on for a while until you realize that one of the two people is logged into Google.

The solution to this entire mess, which is slowly worsening, is to "wikify" search results somehow without overdoing it. Yahoo! had a good idea when its search engine was actually a directory with segments "owned" by communities of experts. These people could isolate the best of breed, something Google has never managed to do. The basis for Google page-ranking is to equate popularity with quality, and once you look at the information developed by SEO experts, you learn that this strategy barely works.

We have to suffer until something better comes along, but there is at least one crucial fix that could be easily implemented: user flagging. Parked sites, for instance, could be flagged the way you flag spam on a message board or a miscategorized post on craigslist. The risk here is that creeps trying to shut down a specific site could swamp Google with false flags, so maintaining integrity would be difficult. People with their own agendas have already infiltrated and controlled aspects of craigslist and Wikipedia, unfortunately. On Wikipedia, for example, a group pushing the global-warming agenda prevents almost any post with contrary data or opinions, no matter how minor the point.

One suggestion floating around involves the semantic Web, which anticipates even more SEO tricks--and requires a certain level of honesty that can never be maintained. I suggest rethinking the basic organization of the Web itself, using the Google News concept. In other words, compartmentalize the Web to an extreme. Tagging might help. But you should be able just to search through a subsegment and check a box that eliminates merchants with faux-informational sites.

And speaking of check boxes, over the years there have been numerous attempts at creating an advanced search mechanism utilizing check boxes and a question-and-response AI network. You'd think that idea would have gotten further than it has. Hopefully, someone will conceptualize something new that works better than what we have today. The situation is just deteriorating too fast.

Original story

RIAA win: Tennessee to police campus networks

Tennessee has agreed to filter computer networks for unauthorized music downloads at the state's colleges and universities.

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen signed into law a bill designed to thwart music piracy at the state's campuses, the Recording Industry Association of America said on its Web site.

The bill requires Tennessee public and private schools exercise "appropriate means" to ensure that campus computer networks aren't being used to download copyright material via peer-to-peer file-sharing programs, the RIAA said.

"Upon a proper analysis of the network," the RIAA continued, "those institutions are required to implement technological support and develop and enforce a computer network usage policy to effectively limit the number of unauthorized transmissions of copyrighted works."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet-user advocacy group, called the law "ridiculous," and said the costs of enforcing it would top $9 million.

"The entertainment industry lobby seems to be succeeding, bit-by-bit in persuading legislators to coerce universities into buying 'infringement suppression' technologies," the EFF said in a blog post, adding that these technologies are expensive and "won't stop file sharing on campus networks."

The RIAA said that a 2007 Student Monitor survey found that more than half of college students download music and movies illegally.

A friend of mine, Patricia Montesinos, a senior at the University of Tennessee, said Tuesday she's seen no notifications yet from the school about filtering.

Original story

Outside the An Jia baby cot factory in Dongguan, a group of factory workers surrounds a single policeman on a motorbike.

Once-thriving workshops are now silent and bare

"Where are the three people you arrested?" they shout at him. "Give them back to us!"

The officer looks uneasy and he decides to retreat.

Right now, factory workers here are angry. The world's financial crisis has begun to hit them.

It is easy to understand why: since the West can't afford to buy as much, China isn't able to sell as much. In better times, the An Jia factory would ship its baby cots to the US. But now its workers say the US has stopped buying. Their wages have been cut by up to 75%.

One man waves two wage slips, typed on small pieces of paper. The slip for May shows that he earned 2,523 yuan ($370; £248) that month. The slip for September shows that his earnings were cut to 445 yuan ($65).

"Our boss wants us to bail him out," shouts Li San Le, one of the workers.

"When things were good, the boss didn't give us a raise, but now that he's in trouble, he wants us to rescue him," adds a woman standing in the crowd.

Full story

18 November 2008, 15:29

Gartner: Open Source is pervasive

About 85 percent of all companies are already using open source; the other 15 percent will follow within the next twelve months. These are the findings of a survey carried out in early summer by market research firm Gartner, who polled 274 companies of various sizes from a variety of sectors in North America, Europe and the Pacific. The survey revealed that open source was particularly popular in the infrastructure sector, but that the number of free business-related applications was on the increase. On the whole, says Gartner, you are just as likely to find open source solutions in business-critical as in non-critical areas.

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SEC Charges Mark Cuban With Insider Trading
NOVEMBER 17, 2008, 1:39 P.M. ET

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The Securities and Exchange Commission filed insider-trading charges against Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, over his sale of shares in Internet company Mamma.com after he learned it was raising money through a private financing.

The SEC alleges Mr. Cuban sold his entire 6% ownership stake on June 28, 2004, immediately after learning that Mamma.com was raising money through a public investment in private entity, or PIPE. The next day, after the markets closed, the company announced the PIPE financing. When the markets opened the morning of June 30, shares of the company dropped by 9%. By selling his stake, Mr. Cuban avoided more than $750,000 in losses, the SEC alleges. (Read the full text of the complaint.)

In a PIPE, shares are issued at a discount. When a PIPE is announced, it's often followed by a drop in the stock price as shareholders anticipate their stake will be diluted. Investment advisers working for the company often solicit interest from potential investors. Investors usually have to sign confidentiality agreements stating that they won't trade on the information. However, Mr. Cuban's lawyers deny that he was told the information was confidential.

Adobe pinballs 64-bit Flash Player 10 alpha into Linux orbit

By Kelly Fiveash • Get more from this author

Posted in Applications, 17th November 2008 13:01 GMT

Adobe Systems has spun out an alpha version of its Flash Player 10 technology for 64-bit Linux software users today, to satisfy the needs of freetards everywhere.

The multinational said it has done so to underscore its "commitment to the Linux community" which is ahead of Windows and Apple Mac OS X in the 64-bit processor support game.

Previously, Firefox fans could only use the 32-bit version when running the Flash 10 plug-in because, at release last month, the software needed 32-bit emulation for it to work on Linux platforms and other operating systems.

"Furthering Adobe's commitment to the Linux community and as part of ongoing efforts to ensure the cross-platform compatibility of Flash Player, an alpha version of 64-bit Adobe Flash Player 10 for Linux operating systems was released on 11/17/2008 and is available for download," the software firm said today.

"This offers easier, native installation on 64-bit Linux distributions and removes the need for 32-bit emulation."

Adobe wants openistas to play with the pre-release 64-bit flavoured version of the software and provide feedback to the company about the new features, enhancements and compatibility with previously authored content.

It did not offer any indication about when a 64-bit version of Flash Player 10 might land for either the Mac OS X or Windows, however.

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EU slaps duties on China goods as G20 meets

"They order, said I, this matter better in France." So wrote Laurence Sterne in his 1768 book A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. Alas, things have changed much since then, at least as far as the Internet is concerned. In the light of recent events, now he would we have to say: they order this matter worse in France. Even more unfortunately, France's bad habits are spreading, and could have serious consequences for free software.

These started going downhill with the "three strikes and you're out" idea:

The French President today trumpeted a new plan by some of the country's ISPs and its record and film industries to shut off illegal file-sharers' internet access."

Read the rest...

"In short, it is going to try and cannibalise the tiny GNU/Linux market - try and pull customers using Red Hat and CentOS over to using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Good luck, gentlemen, you're going to need it. I could send a rabbit's foot over as well, if you like.

CentOS is a distribution which can best be described as "Red Hat minus the trademarks."

In effect, this itself shows a weakness in Novell's sales strategy - the company cannot, on its own...."

Read the rest...

Still sending naked email? Get your protection here

Buckle your seatbelt, encrypt your bits

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco 14th November 2008 20:22 GMT

Security How-to In this age of brazen, warrantless wiretaps and never-ending data breaches, you'd think email encryption would be considered de rigueur. Alas, even among the digerati it's rarely given the time of day because encryption is seen as an exotic undertaking that brings more hassle than benefit.

To be sure, incorporating a robust encryption regimen into a routine that involves sending and receiving hundreds of emails each day won't happen by accident. If you've never done it before, there's a modestly steep learning curve that's necessary not only for you, but for all the people you correspond with. No wonder few people bother.

Jon Callas, CTO of encryption software provider PGP, likens encrypting email to wearing a seatbelt, which a few decades ago was so unpopular that many people only did when they were required by law to do so.

"You only need to wear a seatbelt on the day you get in a crash and you only need to encrypt the one email that's going to get lost," he says. "The way that you make sure you encrypt that one mail that needs to be encrypted is the same way you make sure you wear your seatbelt on the one day you get in a crash and that is you do it all the time."

Your writer was forced to confront his own encryption apathy about a year ago, when asked for a public key by a source promising a juicy scoop. Two days later, the key was proffered, but the experience made it clear that the road to encryption Nirvana - at least for us Windows users - is paved with solutions that are confusing, incomplete, or impractical.

For those so inclined, PGP sells products such as PGP Desktop Email that Callas says "literally passes the my-75-year-old-mother-can-use" test. Your writer, on the other hand, opted for Gpg4Win, a free Windows implementation of the open source Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG). Used with the Enigmail add-on for Mozilla's Thunderbird email client, it offers everything needed to generate, store, and manage digital keys for email encryption.

What follows is a step-by-step tutorial for Windows users. (Linux geeks looking for help should seek out Brenno de Winter's excellent how-to here.)

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Don't Worry.  Be Happy. Dwooo...dwoop dwoop do do doot doo de doooo...

Have a Great Day! OK?

--Dietrich

For the most part, I am very happy with Sun's xVM VirtualBox, now at version 2.0.4.

However, one nagging problem for me persists.  Although VirtualBox does support USB 2.0 (VMware 1.07 does not), for some unknown reason it refuses to recognize a USB connection between my Nokia N95 and the Nokia PC Suite software.  After spending much time on trying to get it to work, I gave up and turned to VMware.  Among other things, Nokia PC Suite allows one to update the N95's firmware, and my objective here is to update to the newest version 30.0.015.

VMware Server 2.0 is a huge install, is a web UI, and based on my beta testing is quite processor-intensive for my purposes.  I have found the 32-bit version 1.0.7 to be quite nimble and I know that the USB 1.0 connection works with Nokia PC Suite.  It took about 10 minutes to download the rpm, install and create a blank 10G Windows XP ntfs partition.

What I don't relish is having to do the entire Windows install over again, and so decided to break out Knoppix to copy the VirtualBox Windows partition image to a file and then move it into VMware to the prepped empty ntfs partition.

How, pray tell?  The below steps were taken running on openSUSE Linux x86_64 11.0:

1) Download a copy of the Knoppix DVD iso.  You don't have to burn it to a DVD.
2) In VirtualBox, go into Settings and set the CD-ROM to mount the Knoppix iso file.
3) Start your VirtualBox Windows XP and your VM should boot directly into Knoppix KDE.
4) On the Desktop, right-click on the harddrive hda1 (or sda1) and select 'Mount'
5) Open a terminal window and su to root
6) In VMware, go into Settings and set the CD-ROM to mount the Knoppix iso file.
7) Start your VMware Windows XP and your VM should boot directly into Knoppix KDE.
8) On the Desktop, right-click and mount the harddrive hda1 with Read/Write access
9) Go to the KDE kicker menu and select KNOPPIX->Services->start sshd server
10) Open a terminal window and su into root, change the root password to 'pass'
(Knoppix doesn't have a root password a startup and we need root access via ssh)
11) Return to the VirtualBox terminal window root prompt and type:

dd if=/dev/hda bs=15M conv=sync,noerror | ssh -o TCPKeepAlive=yes \ root@vmware_host_ip  "dd of=/dev/hda"

Now go get a cup of coffee and wait. 

The above dd command streams a copy over ssh to the destination VMware ntfs partition in 15M blocksize chunks, which speeds up the process considerably.  For a 10gig partition it took about 35 minutes.  The 'TCPKeepAlive=yes' keeps the sshd server from dropping the ssh client connection if there is any sort of excessive timeout interval.

Once the image copy is complete, your terminal window will return to another prompt with the results of your dd copy.  Mine shown here:

---

#dd if=nt_backup bs=15M conv=sync,noerror | ssh -o TCPKeepAlive=yes \ 
root@192.168.114.128 "dd of=/dev/hda"

The authenticity of host '192.168.114.128 (192.168.114.128)' can't be established.

RSA key fingerprint is 23:d6:0e:b7:7b:23:47:9f:f6:45:a6:cc:5b:f1:d4:b1.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.114.128' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.

20971520+0 records in
20971520+0 records out
10737418240 bytes (11 GB) copied
20969319+4402 records in
20971520+0 records out
10737418240 bytes (11 GB) copied

Password:
#                        

---

This was well worth the effort as it reduced the time to install windows by a couple of hours. 

Keep in mind, all of the above assumes you own a legitimate copy of Windows and that you are using only one instance at any given time.  It wouldn't be good to willy-nilly copy your image file around and Microsoft does check the instance and force a registration process at startup.

So, that's how it's done.  Knoppix once again comes through!

--Dietrich

AMD jumps into the netbook fray

November 13, 2008 (IDG News Service) Advanced Micro Devices is jumping into the mini-notebook space, delivering processors starting in 2009 for small laptops that can run basic applications like Web surfing and e-mail, the company said Thursday.

The processors will be designed to fit in laptops with screens smaller than 10 inches and targeted at users who want secondary laptops, AMD said.

However, the processors will be powerful enough to provide more than a basic "Web experience," said Randy Allen, senior vice president of the computing solutions group at AMD, during a speech at the company's financial analyst day in Sunnyvale, Calif. The event was webcast.

AMD's plans are directly targeted at supplanting Intel's dominance in the netbook space, although AMD referred to it as the "mini-notebook" market. Intel's Atom currently is available in most netbooks, like in Asus' Eee PC, with other companies like Via vying for a spot with its Nano processor.

Debian Installer lenny release candidate 1

November 12th, 2008

The Debian Installer team is proud to announce the first release candidate of the installer for Debian GNU/Linux Lenny.

Improvements in this release of the installer

• Improved support for Live-CD installation media (much faster and more reliable than earlier releases);
• Support for some NAS devices based on Marvell's ARM-compatible Orion chip:
  • QNAP TS-109/TS-209 and TS-409;
  • HP Media Vault mv2120;
  • Buffalo Kurobox Pro;
• Installer images for Netwinder have been added again;
• Installer images for i386 Xen guests
• Support for hardware speech synthesis (speakup) has been added;
• Upgrade of packages early in pkgsel, for example to get available security updates for base system packages;
• Support for loading firmware from (removable) media during the installation;
• i386/amd64: support for installing to and loading firmware from MMC/SD cards;
• New translations: Welsh, Irish, Northern Sami, Serbian (Amharic and Marathi were added in beta releases).

Known issues in this release

• i386: for this release, installation from floppy disk is not supported;
• PowerPC: the graphical installer should work on almost all systems with ATI graphics cards, but probably not others;
• touchpads should work with the graphical installer, but support may be suboptimal - if you experience problems, you should use an external mouse instead.

See the errata for details and a full list of known issues.

We do need your help to find bugs and further improve the installer, so please try it.

Installation CDs and DVDs, other media, errata, and everything else you'll need are available from the Debian Installer web site.

The Debian Installer team thanks everybody who has contributed to this release.