...will he ever win?

Linus Torvalds rarely makes appearances at conferences, and it's even less common for him to get up in front of the crowd and speak. He made an exception for LinuxCon Brazil, though, where he and Andrew Morton appeared in a question and answer session led by Linux Foundation director Jim Zemlin. The resulting conversation covered many aspects of kernel development, its processes, and its history. Click below (subscribers only) for the full report from São Paulo.

August 31, 2010 10:23 PM

Today is the day affectionately known as “Twitter’s OAuthpocalypse”. Twitter is shutting down basic auth completely, which Gwibber has relied on. So after today Twitter will cease to work for anyone that hasn’t updated to the OAuth enabled version of Gwibber. I have uploaded packages for both Maverick and Lucid to the ~ubuntu-desktop PPA for testing. We need to get an SRU out pretty quickly for Lucid.

Any testing would be greatly appreciated, please provide feedback on this list.

https://edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-desktop/+archive/ppa

Make sure you restart gwibber-service, you should be prompted to authorize Twitter.

[Discuss Call for testing, Gwibber (Lucid and Maverick) on the Forums]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-desktop mailing list on Tue Aug 31 2010

August 31, 2010 10:22 PM

Amazon might be getting ready to expand its video offerings, according to a report released this afternoon by The Wall Street Journal. Despite facing a wall of "no comments" from every party rumored to be involved, the report indicates that the retailing giant, which already offers sales of popular TV shows, is looking to launch a subscription video service that would operate similarly to its current services, which can be watched on the Web or a variety of video devices.

According to The Journal, Amazon has approached a number of media companies to try to get them to sign onto the plan, which has been pitched in a number of variations. One of the more intriguing ideas is to bundle it in with Amazon Prime, the company's premium shopping service. Although this might cost Amazon money in the short term—its fees to the content providers would have to come from whatever profit it makes on the average Prime customer—it would guarantee the content providers a large audience, and might provide an additional incentive for new and existing Prime customers.

So far, it's not clear if anyone has taken Amazon up on the deal. The company is said to want to have the service in place by the holidays, but may have to revise those plans or scrap them entirely if none of the content providers comes through.

The apparent reticence of the media companies makes for a sharp contrast with the music business, which seemed to be eager to have a subscription service succeed, providing them with an indefinite revenue stream. In contrast to the unified front of the record labels, however, the video producers seem to be very fragmented, experimenting with a variety of ad-supported and paid rental and purchase options. So far, it appears that Amazon hasn't offered them something they feel they can't get somewhere else.

Read the comments on this post

August 31, 2010 09:56 PM

This month we welcome Jose Marchesi as maintainer of the new package recutils, Mike Gran as maintainer of the new package guile-ncurses, and long-time maintainers Bruno Haible, Jim Meyering, and Simon Josefsson adding the new package vc-changelog to their duties.

August 31, 2010 08:39 PM

Many high-technology companies have run afoul of the US' Export Control System, which regulates the overseas sales of items that can be put to use for military or intelligence-gathering purposes. Given the pace of innovation, hardware and software that was once the domain of the military or spy agencies can rapidly wind up in the hands of consumers, meaning that the system for tracking what's restricted needs to be nimble and user-friendly. Unfortunately, it was anything but, and that has led to a new effort to reform the system in a way that would increase the opportunity for US companies to sell goods overseas.

The impact of export controls on the high-tech industry have caused problems for everyone from browser makers—who once ran up against restrictions on their encryption software, despite its wide availability outside the US—to hardware makers; Apple once advertised that its G4 processor fell under export control due to outdated definitions of what constituted a supercomputer. But they also affect more mundane items. In the announcement that outlines the reform efforts, the White House notes that the brake pads for the army's M1A1 tank are essentially identical to those used in fire trucks, but only the former ends up under export controls; "Under our current system, we devote the same resources to protecting the brake pad as we do to protecting the M1A1 tank itself."

Read the comments on this post

August 31, 2010 08:32 PM

Thanks to the efforts of summer campaigns intern, Steve DuBois, we have all the video and audio from the conference ready for your viewing pleasure.

August 31, 2010 08:30 PM

US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke went to Nashville yesterday to address a symposium on intellectual property enforcement, and he threw down the gauntlet: the Obama administration will find, board, and scuttle digital pirate ships, and the SS Copyright is going to get a new coat of armored plating.

"I think it's important to lay down a marker about how the Obama administration views this issue," he said of online copyright infringement. "As Vice President Biden has said on more than one occasion, 'Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft,' and it should be dealt with accordingly."

There's much to be said for this view of "dealing with" piracy—which is why we have long argued that the judgments handed down in P2P lawsuits against twenty-something music fans have been ludicrous. $1.92 million? $675,000? No one walking out of a Walmart with a stack of Richard Marx discs under his arm would be subject to such penalties.

Locke then lamented the fate of songwriters. "Recently, I've had a chance to read letters from award winning writers and artists whose livelihoods have been destroyed by music piracy. One letter that stuck out for me was a guy who said the songwriting royalties he had depended on to 'be a golden parachute to fund his retirement had turned out to be a lead balloon.' This just isn't right."

To make it right, Locke pledged to work for global IP norms, enforcement of those norms, and a "strengthening" of the international copyright system.

Read the comments on this post

August 31, 2010 07:55 PM

The Debian Project has put up a brief notice on the passing of longtime contributor Frans Pop. "Frans was involved in Debian as a maintainer of several packages, a supporter of the S/390 port, and one of the most involved members of the Debian Installer team. He was a Debian Listmaster, editor and release manager of the Installation Guide and the release notes, as well as a Dutch translator."

August 31, 2010 07:48 PM

Palm's webOS smartphone platform introduced some compelling innovations when it was first released in 2009. The next major version of the operating system, which is currently under development, brings some noteworthy feature improvements and new capabilities for developers.

The first beta release of the webOS 2.0 SDK, which was made available this morning, offers developers an early look at some of the new functionality. The new feature lineup includes substantial enhancements to webOS multitasking and support for deeper extensibility in several key components of the platform.

Read the comments on this post

August 31, 2010 07:24 PM

The first release candidate for PostgreSQL 9.0 is available for testing. "No changes in commands, interfaces or APIs are expected between this release candidate and the final version. Applications which will deploy on 9.0 can and should test against 9.0rc1. Depending on bug reports, there may or may not be more release candidates before the final release."

August 31, 2010 06:57 PM