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Don Becker On The State Of HPC

Linux Magazine interviews Don Becker about high-performance computing topics. "Another thing that did not really pan out is Linux BIOS (or coreboot as it is now called). For HPC coreboot is not a good thing. For commodity systems, it puts us back to depending on the intimate details of the BIOS,, The current BIOS structure, while it could be improved, is workable. What we can hope for is that the BIOS is gone in less than a second. Right now it gone in a few seconds and I don’t see it as an important feature in HPC. Customers asking “why not coreboot?” may want to consider that at Penguin we were tasked with maintaining a coreboot machine and found that the best solution to get the machine usable was to burn a new standard BIOS."

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1 Million Linux Kernels Booted for Vast Botnet Simulation (Linux Insider)

Linux Insider covers an experiment at Sandia National Laboratories. "Computer security researchers still don't know much about how botnets work. At Sandia National Laboratories, though, scientists are preparing for a massive experiment. They've booted up 1 million Linux kernels as virtual machines, which will allow them to observe the behavior of a simulated network of 10 million computers online at once -- complete with users who get infected with botnets."

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Companies

Canonical Expands Ubuntu Linux Landscape (InternetNews.com)

Sean Michael Kerner looks at Canonical's Landscape. ""Canonical's Landscape Dedicated Server is a software appliance that is installed on the users' hardware. Updates will be made available by download on an as-needed basis when major kernel/security patches become available," Ken Drachnik, Landscape manager at Canonical, told InternetNews.com. "Of course, this points out one of the major differences between the Hosted edition and Dedicated edition -- users will need to provide hardware and a trained resource to manage Landscape on-site.""

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Mentor unveils Android, Linux strategy at DAC (EDN)

EDN covers several Linux-related moves by Mentor Graphics. "Mentor Graphics announced its acquisition of Embedded Alley Solutions as a key component of its Android and embedded Linux strategy Wednesday afternoon at the Design Automation Conference. Mentor also announced the integration of its Nucleus Graphical User Interface tool with the ARM Mali graphics processing unit; it announced the availability of a Linux and Nucleus operating-system combination for the Marvell Sheeva MV78200 dual-core embedded processor; and it said that it is extending Embedded Alley's Android mobile-applications platform to support Freescale Semiconductor's QorIQ and PowerQUICC III processors."

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Motorola Pledges Cheaper Android Phones (PCMag)

PCMag reports that Motorola is planning on releasing more Android-based phones. "Android smart phones. Cheap Android phones. Android phones on the Nextel/Boost iDen network. Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said many of next year's Motorola phones will run the Google Android OS in a call with analysts today, continuing a big bet on the Linux-based system. "The majority of our new devices will be smartphones, as we expand Android across a broader set of price points," Jha said."

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Legal

Company Receives Patent for Podcasting (ReadWriteWeb)

ReadWriteWeb reports that VoloMedia has patented podcasting. "VoloMedia, a podcast analytics, advertising, and distribution company, just received a patent for "providing episodic media," including podcasts. According to the company, which filed for the patent in November 2003, U.S. Patent 7,568,213 covers all episodic media downloads, not just the RSS-dependent downloads that power today's podcasts. VoloMedia CEO Murgesh Navar says that the company doesn't plan to go after individual podcasters, but that the company plans to "work collaboratively with key participants in the industry." We do wonder, however, if VoloMedia can really claim to have invented podcasting in 2003, given that the concept was already under development by Dave Winer and others in late 2000 and early 2001." (Thanks to Don Marti).

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A Jesuit's Guide to Open Standards (Computerworld UK)

Over at Computerworld UK, Glyn Moody describes the push to add patent-encumbered technology to "open" standards. "The logic here seems to be that there would be an 'imbalance' in open standards if it were insisted that patents terms were excluded — because balance obviously means having standards with and without patents. While it's true that creates a 'balance', it's a purely linguistic one; the fact is that patent-encumbered standards requiring licensing fees cannot, by definition, be open. That's because they do not create level playing fields: there is always one or more players who occupy a privileged position. So the balance is entirely specious."

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Interviews

Is free the new pay? (BBC News)

BBC News talks with Red Hat's Matthew Szulik. "Mr Szulik was not at Red Hat from day one. "Red Hat used to be a magazine business when I joined," he told Peter Day on the BBC World Service's Global Business programme. The business now accounts for 80% of the open-source market, a fact that has led to some people calling it the Microsoft of the open source world." (Thanks to Neil Sheed)

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Resources

Will Geolocation Find a Home on Linux Desktops? (Datamation)

Bruce Byfield looks at geolocation, coming to a desktop near you. "This year, a new dimension is appearing on the Linux desktop. It's geolocation: the capability to detect and record where you and other people are, and to use the information to enhance the desktop. Potentially affecting everything from the metadata stored with files to the mechanics of social networking, geolocation is already starting to arrive in GNOME and KDE. But the first implementations are only a hint of the features that geolocation might soon provide."

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Reviews

A first look at KDE 4.3 (ComputerWorld)

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols looks at KDE 4.3 on openSUSE 11.1. "The new desktop style, Plasma Air, is both very attractive and very flexible. It's a nice combination. I'm both happy with its default look and feel, and I appreciate that I can easily set it to working the way I want it to work. One interesting improvement, which you'll need to look closely for, is that you can now reset the System Settings window so that it looks and acts like the KDE 3.x Control Center. Since, I still find that tree-view to be far more useful than the KDE 4.x default, I welcomed this change."

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Hands-on: Linux appliances made easy with SUSE Studio (ars Technica)

ars Technica reviews SUSE Studio. "Novell has launched a new Web service called SUSE Studio that simplifies the process of building Linux-based software appliances. It provides a convenient interface for creating custom versions of Novell's SUSE Linux distribution with specialized configurations. The service is part of Novell's broader SUSE Appliance Program initiative."

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Waddling Past The Windows (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal covers an Ubuntu bootable USB key in the shape of an emperor penguin. "Perhaps best about the product, though, is that it gives back more than just your data. AMP [Active Media Products] has partnered with the World Wildlife Fund on the drives, and will be donating five percent of the retail price of each drive to the WWF -- with the commitment of a minimum contribution of $25,000 annually. The company has partnered with the WWF on two other endangered-species drives, for polar bears and pandas."

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Miscellaneous

GNOME Decides to Ditch Drawings (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal covers a recent decision to simplify menus by leaving out the icons. "According to a blog post by Andreas Nilsson of the GNOME Art Team, a new policy on icon use has been adopted for future versions. In addition to adding larger icons for certain locales, the team has decided that the default value of the gtk-menu-images property in future GNOME releases will be changed to false, eliminating most of the icons used in menus. (This would include those used to represent "Open," "Save," and other similar dialogues.) The team feels it will produce a "visually more attractive default and that it will result in a cleaner and more efficient interface.""

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The White House Sends an Invitation: PCAST Meeting Aug. 6 and 7 (Groklaw)

Groklaw has been invited to a meeting of the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST), to be held August 6-7, 2009. "PCAST is a group of scientists and engineers who advise the President and the Office of the President, providing policy recommendations. The purpose of the meeting is to set priorities for the coming year. I know many of you are stakeholders, CEOs and executives of companies and leaders and contributors to software projects, but you don't have to be: the general public can contribute also."

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