It sounds quite alarming, the way it's worded, but trust me, they don't drag them out at dawn and shoot them for this or disbar anyone. It's just the wording of the notice, which is standard. You can find Special Order 109 [PDF], In re: AUTHORIZATION FOR CONVERSION TO CASE MANAGEMENT/ELECTRONIC CASE FILING, here. It's local to Nevada, but it's part of the federal court system switch to digitalization. The Clerk of the Court is responsible to keep the official record, and so there has to be a way to identify when an attorney is who he says, when a document is filed. So this is what it refers to, that they need passwords and such. It also represents their consent to being served electronically.

Some cloud computing vendors, such as 3tera and Nirvani, push their own proprietary platforms and tools, which forces adopters to limit their options and work in a restricted or closed architecture. When these established vendors say cloud, they mean their cloud. As a result, Web developers may believe that, in order to use cloud computing, they must accept limitations in the way they write and build their applications. But that view is a misconception; open standards for cloud computing are already in place and are being tweaked.

So the attempt to stretch the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act has failed. Please read the statute for yourself, and ask yourself: do you want talking about computers and security to become a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment and subject to FBI and Secret Service oversight? That's what almost just happened. You can find the documents in MBTA v. Anderson here. If you read the MBTA's complaint, you'll find the allegations of violations of the CFAA on page 12. I think you'll find the MBTA interpretation of the statute shocking ("... the damage constitutes a threat to public health and safety... affects a computer system used by a government entity for national security purposes..."). The research was about getting a ride on a subway for free. In any case, the judge didn't buy it, with respect to the restraining order.

Linux has no shortage of audio and video players, but if you want to devote you whole system to multimedia use, you need the Xbox Media Center (XBMC). Although initially designed for the Xbox gaming console, XBMC has been ported to other platforms. The Linux port of XBMC that I use is quite usable, especially for video playback, despite the fact that not all XBMC features have yet been ported.

Scalix collaboration platform, with its latest release version 11.4, aims to be a good alternative to Microsoft Exchange. Based on the HP OpenMail platform, discontinued by Hewlett-Packard in 2001, it has been further developed by Scalix and now acts as an enterprise email and group calendar server with the option of integrating systems like ERP, CRM, and billing into the Scalix system using its open API. It is compatible with most LDAP authentication mechanisms, such as those in Windows Active Directory, Novell eDirectory, and Red Hat Directory Server. The most prominent feature of Scalix is its Exchange compatibility; you can use an Outlook client to access the Scalix platform. Scalix also provides an AJAX-based client that is nearly identical to Microsoft Exchange Outlook Web Access (OWA). Aside from Outlook compatibility, Scalix also claims to coexist peacefully with other existing Exchange email systems.

A shift from multi-core power-gobbling monsters toward whisper-quiet systems with single-digit power consumption is rippling through the desktop market. This trend plays right into the hands of a Paris-based company called Linutop, which offers a miniature Linux-based desktop system. The latest version of the machine appeals to customers who are in the market for a machine with green credentials and low maintenance costs. After testing one myself, I found the tiny desktop has a lot going for it.

Wait a second. What's that "subject to no further appeals against the decision" part? What rules would those be? When I read the JTC1 Directives, Edition 5, Version 3.0 [PDF], I see in the section on appeals another step you can take if the TMB/SMB decide not to proceed with your appeal, which is what just happened: 11.4 Appeal Against a Decision of the TMB/SMBs

An appeal against a decision of the TMB/SMB shall be submitted to the Secretaries-General with full documentation on all stages of the case.

The Secretaries-General shall refer the appeal together with their comments to the members of the Councils within one month after receipt of the appeal.

The Councils shall make their decision within three months.

So, ask your lawyer, but I read that as saying a denial by the TMB/SMB is *not* necessarily the last word, no matter what the press release said, if an NB wishes to bring the appeal to the next level, which would be to the "Secretaries-General" and "the Council".

Who's that? How does that work? I've done some digging, and here's the joke. Three of the appealing NBs are listed as members of the Council. Again, ask your lawyer, but here's what I've found.

Linux.com correspondent R. Scott Belford caught up with Open Invention Network CEO Keith Bergelt at the 2008 LinuxWorld Expo and had a pleasant (on-camera) conversation with him.

Cluster computing has played a pivotal role in the way research is conducted in educational environments. Because the amount of available money and hardware varies between university researchers, often it's necessary to find a clustering solution that can work well on a small scale, but also can be expanded into a large computing cluster. To maximize grants, researchers typically ask for an open source solution to meet their needs. Despite the lack of certain desirable features, Rocks clusters are among the best open source solution for building a computing cluster.

Ammar’s Wedding

Originally uploaded by Belutz

Ammar aka y3dips, one of the founding father of Indonesian Ubuntu Community is getting married on August 16, 2008.
May he and his wife live happily ever after.

Been busy busy as always :-). As of last Monday, I’m now an employee of Canonical as a Release Engineer for the OEM Services Custom Engineering Group.

Xubuntu is doing really well. We had our strategy document officially recognized by the CC at the last CC meeting (I’ll begin implementing the details September 1st). Furthermore, upstream relationships with Xfce4 are better than ever which I personally find very exciting. Finally, Xubuntu has finally reached a “critical mass” where as we have enough contributors that things get done without there having to be someone such as myself doing a bunch of hand holding. Go Xubuntu Team, Go!

Last but not least, I bought a kitten. Pictures will be available soon.

At one of the suppliers I noticed a funny difference today:

• Intel Xeon QC X3360 2.83GHz, 1333MHz, 12MB, S775, Box: 235,29 euro
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz, 1333MHz, S775, Box: 368,91 euro

Mentioned prices are excluding VAT.

I am happy its not the other way around, since we stick with Xeon normally. As far as I know there is not much difference between the two CPU’s besides the branding and obviously the pricing.

NimbleX, a Slackware-based distribution, advertises itself as "the new wave of Linux." However, what is appealing in NimbleX -- its speed and small footprint and the resulting selection of alternative software choices -- will likely strike veteran GNU/Linux users as being very old school. By contrast, its limitations -- too little attention to such aspects as the installer, packaging, and security -- seem all too modern, being reminiscent of other distros intent on commercialization or emulating Windows, even though NimbleX is a community distribution and largely a labor of love for Romanian developer Bogdan Radulescu.

It might be a tad early for that title, methinks. IBM still looms on SCO's horizon, after all. Novell was a sideline. The main event has yet to occur.

SCO doesn't need as much money as they thought they would to give to Novell, so maybe Darl McBride can stay on as CEO after all, we learn. There's a new business plan that sounds like it has to do with calendars online and messaging, and ... well, read about FC Mobile Life, its project with FranklinCovey, for yourselves: That type of transaction is essentially what happens with the FranklinCovey product FC Mobile Life, which provides near-instant communication for scheduling, delegating tasks and sending text, photos and audio, said Jeff Hunsaker, SCO president and COO.

"Our focus here is on collaboration, and it's real time. It's real-time collaboration with people you trust, with a group. We've kind of brought it all together. That's the value we bring here."

FC Mobile Life can work on BlackBerries and phones running Windows Mobile, with iPhone compatibility under development. The system interacts and updates information on a Web browser and smart phone. SCO also is working to integrate Microsoft's Outlook e-mail and calendar into the system.

So that's the plan. The new one. Real time collaboration with people you trust. Hmm. Trust ... People you trust. Hmm. Remember when they used to call Darl McBride "the Linux Killer"? Methinks that's still the real business plan. In his dreams.

Age: 24
Location: Lima - Perú
IRC Nick: nxvl

How long have you used Linux and what was your first distro?
4 or 5 years from now on, i started with RedHat, i tried it for a few months, then i started testing a lot of distros (gentoo, fedora, conectiva, madrake) and finally found debian, which i used for almost a year until ubuntu shows up, then i switched and never left the distro.

How long have you been using Ubuntu?
Since Warty Warlog.

When did you get involved with the MOTU team and how?
Almost a year ago. I always wanted to contribute back to the FOSS Community doing some developments, and since i was an ubuntu user, one day i came into the web page, the saw the “Get involved” link, clicked on it, and that was the point of no return. I started doing some merges on the early hardy release cycle, then get involved on the server team, where i’ve been doing most of my work lately.

What helped you learn packaging and how Ubuntu teams work?
I started reading the packaging guide, recipes was also a good help, but the key of my learn process was the MOTU community, i find a lot of lovely and helpful people that were always there to answer my questions, my lovely sponsors, who, with a lot of patience checked my patches and point me to my errors and/or best practices on how to solve things, there is where i really learned about the ubuntu work.

What’s your favorite part of working with the MOTU?
That it a huggy community!! All the people involved are helpful, lovely and doesn’t hesitate on showing their love. They also can point you at your errors in a really polite way, but they will also told you when you did a good work, and i find that awesome.

Any advice for people wanting to help out MOTU?
Jump in now! “I will do it tomorrow” is a lie, if you want to start help, start now, why to wait until tomorrow? You will find a lot of helpful people who can guide you on your process. I swear it would be an awesome experience.

Are you involved with any local Linux/Ubuntu groups?
Yes! I’m part of the Peruvian LoCo Council where i try to get more people involved on the ubuntu development giving some talks in local conferences while i can.

What are you going to focus on in Intrepid?
I’ve been working on Server Usability, being that easier ways to manage your servers, since there is a big barrer for Windows sysadmins to switch to Linux, but as it is a hard work (and actually a lot) and i
don’t have the free time i wanted to have it won’t be ready for intrepid, but we already have some of it pieces getting into shape!

What do you do in your other spare time?
Spare time? What’s that? I actually work at PriceWaterhouseCoopers as an intern (i used to be senior consultant in the past on a full time job), i’m also finishing the university and have a wonderful girlfriend who take almost all of my free time :P. I also love to hang out with my friends, having some beers and stuff, and on summers i love to go to the beach and surf when i can, but there is not a lot of other spare time for me now

The automotive industry, with its particular emphasis on efficient workflow and practices, has had a lot to teach the software world over the years.  From the process of requirements, specification and design through to LEAN development practices, it is difficult to argue that we haven’t learned anything from them.

I think that there’s another practice from that industry it might be fun to adopt: the Concept Car (sometimes known as a Show or Halo Car).

These are cars where the designers and engineers have been allowed to let their imaginations run wild, and build something that shows off the limits of what’s possible.  Often they’re also used to explore new technologies or ideas without having to commit to standards of production that would be required for a marketable road car.

And that’s pretty much the key point about these cars, they normally build just one or two and take them around the car and motoring shows for everybody to look at and talk about.

Obviously I’m not suggesting that we build strange and outlandish cars, and drape them in fancy lights and scantily clad people on a slowly rotating podium; but I think the idea can translate to our world.

Thus I’d like to humbly introduce my idea of the Concept Distro.

The Concept Distro would be an engineering project to allow developers and maintainers to let their imaginations run wild.  It’d be released, probably to demonstrate at a major event, and would explicitly not be supported.  Not even basic security support, or a bug tracker, or even answering questions about why things don’t work.

On a Concept Car, it’s entirely normal that half of the doors don’t even open; likewise in the Concept Distro, it would be entirely expected that half of the icons were just placeholders and didn’t do anything if you clicked on them.

After release, engineering effort could be focussed either on integrating the successful technologies into Linux distributions proper, or on working on the next Concept Distro for the next big event a year or two down the line.

In the early days of Ubuntu, when we had two different CDs, we had a plan to do this kind of thing with the Live CD.  Since that didn’t have an installer, it could be a little more experimental and a little more risqué.  It was a good place to try out Network Manager before we integrated it with the distribution proper, and the intent was that the naked people would have had even less clothing (I didn’t mind the loss of this, the male model they picked was not the prettiest of the options).

Assuming we don’t resurrect the naked people, what kinds of things would we do with the Concept Distro?

It’s a chance to make some fundamental changes without having to worry about the support or upgrade implications of them.  I’d like to see what we could do by assuming that the filesystem is a single mount of ext4 on LVM on RAID, which we grow onto additional disks as they are made available.

And since we wouldn’t have to worry about partitioning, it might be interesting to look into rearranging the hierarchy.  Maybe having /System, /Software and /Users really is better than /bin, /usr and /home.

If we went down that route, we could throw out the traditional package manager and experiment with some new approaches.  What better way to upgrade the operating system than:

or switch to a new version with bzr switch?  It works well enough to upgrade my WordPress installation, after all.

From a technology fetishist point of view, there’s plenty to play with and try out.  Would we use ALSA and dmix instead of PulseAudio?  Assuming we didn’t use the Concept Distro to try out going fully volume control per application, of course.  It’d be a great place to see what we can do with Upstart, udev, D-Bus, DeviceKit (replacing HAL)  and other plumbing-layer components.

In the desktop library layer, the bling guys could play with Multi-Pointer X with kernel-mode setting support and a resolution independent GTK+.  Rendering could be fully indirect or entirely direct GL based, depending on preference.

And for the desktop itself, the user experience and interface designers have a completely blank canvas to play with.  Since it’s just a Concept Distro, one needn’t worry about the ability of users to transition to new ways of working.  Instead you can see how they react to seeing new ways of working in a demonstration or talk, perform usability testing in the lab and even see how they get on in the field.

It would be a very fun and exciting project.

Unfortunately, unlike the car world, there’s not necessarily the funding for such a thing.  Who would want to finance an ongoing software development project that was explicitly intended to have no users?

In the automotive world, the Concept Car from a development point of view is important since companies cannot, for example, experiment with new engine technologies and expect their customers to be able to drive them on the road.  In the software world, such “lab” projects are much easier to develop in isolation and tend to remain on our own workstations.

The Concept Car can also serve as a marketing tool, it draws potential customers to your show stand and while looking at the sexy car on the stand they’re ripe for being sold a somewhat more pedestrian road car.  It also aids towards customer loyalty, since you’re more likely to buy another car from a manufacturer who is showing off the most advanced concepts.

In the Linux world, while we appear to have direct competitions between the distributions, the reality is that we co-operate far more than you might expect unless you’re involved with development.  A Concept Distro would need upstream work from just about everybody.

And would such a thing help convert people from Windows or Mac OS?  If it would, maybe it’s a good idea after all.

Gmail, Google's popular Web mail application, is already full of useful features all on its own. But Firefox users can further customize Gmail with a variety of add-ons. Some only change the appearance, while others add functionality that makes Gmail more like a personal planner than just a plain old email application. Let's take a look at three Firefox add-ons for Gmail.

Come join us for Software Freedom Day on September 20th. We will be celebrating at the Howard County Library’s Miller Branch. Help us partake in a day of talks and socializing with our fellow Free Software fans and interested parties.

Right now we are looking for people to give talks on F/OSS software aimed at the end user. The general thoughts have been the talks themselves should last up to about 30 minutes. Once we have the submissions we’ll decide on a schedule for the day. Take a look at the wiki and drop us an email offering your services as a speaker if you want the glory or with general questions about the day.

Like most pilots, I'm a weather junkie. I need a regular weather fix even if I'm stuck indoors and not flying. GNOME's Weather Report panel applet (gweather-applet, technically) is a great fast fix if all I need to know is "Is it raining at the airport right now?"

Aside from fantastic customisability, gweather has really cool icons for seemingly every combination of weather conditions. I'd love to use some of these icons in my own work (as per whatever license they're under, of course!) but I can't seem to find them on my /system files. There must be some way to coax this information out of my system (Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron) but my commandline-fu is weak in this.

So, anyone know where gweather tucks it's icons away?

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #104 for the week of August 10th - August 16th, 2008 is now available.

In this Issue:

* Intrepid Alpha-4 released
* New UWN translation team
* Global Bug Jam: Retrospective
* MOTU school sessions for developer week wanted
* MOTU interview
* Ubuntu stats
* Launchpad news
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* In Other News
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security
* And much, much more!

If you have a story idea for the Weekly News, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!