Peng’s links for Sunday, 31 January

• Lior Kaplan: Hamakor, the Israeli Free Software Society, calls for the annulment of Software Patents. People have been calling for the end of software patents since it’s getting (almost) to the point where it’s getting tough to determine whether a new patent contains prior art due to so many patents being granted. I found this post on Planet Debian and I’m glad to see the Israeli Free Software Society taking the lead on this.
• MJ Ray: Get the Survey Monkey Off Your Back. I’ve long thought using surveymonkey was a pain in the rear because they (seem to) ask for so much from people who are just voting on a survey. It turns out that surveymonkey may be not just a pain in the rear but also violating UK accessibility and privacy laws.
• Lasse Havelund: OpenOffice.org is “a piece of crap” – or is it? OOo has gotten some pretty bad press lately so Lasse did a personal recreation of a study that had a group of teenagers try their hands at word processing and presentation management tasks using both OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office 2007, all in the name of seeing how OOo really compared. He tends to use LaTeX for his writing and hasn’t used either OOo or Office 2007 much “over the last few years.” I won’t spoil his results so you need to read his post. You may be glad you took the time to read it and you can follow his links to get more background info on the test.
• Siegfried Gevatter: GNOME Activity Journal, and installing it on Ubuntu. I’ve been hearing about this app (formerly known as GNOME Zeitgeist) and am curious about it. Siegfried some nice info on why you’d want to use it as well as some easy steps for getting it installed.
• Stephan Hermann: Is it just me, or… People have been kvetching about non-free software being included in distros like Ubuntu ever since it first came out. Stephan writes such a good post on the matter that I doubt I could have said it better myself.
• DesktopLinux.com: Second Lucid Linux alpha said to offer 15-second start-ups. Eric Brown takes a good look at the latest early test release of Ubuntu 10.04, listing both the good and bad to be seen in this bleeding edge release, including some kvetching about support for some proprietary software being included (see previous link).
• Google Chrome Blog: Over 1,500 new features for Google Chrome. Google Chrome dev Nick Baum writes about some of the new features in Chrome and includes a video walk-through for installing an extension (not one that I personally use but you may find it helpful). The post is mostly about using Chrome on a Windows-based box but some of the info is also good for Mac and GNU/Linux users, as well as users of Chromium. There’s also a great tips post on the Chrome blog about managing tabs that you may find helpful.
• Launchpad New: ACTION: Back up old sources from PPAs. It turns out that Personal Package Archives on Launchpad are a little too popular. You may need to back up some of the packages you’ve gotten from PPAs. Jonathan Lange has some info every user of software from a PPA should have.
• Bastian Venthur: How to find packages installed/updated yesterday? If you’re like me you take regular updates to the software you run and every now and then you find a problem has cropped up after updating. The problem is that sometimes you don’t recall what got updated to know where to start tracking down your issue. Bastian asked he readers for ways to find out which packages got updated or installed and he got some really good responses. This is one post you’ll want to add to your permanent reference/resource list.
• Nick Mamatas: Ursula K. LeGuin to Google: Hands off my books! Not every author is satisfied with the proposed solution to the problem of Google’s plan to digitize books to make available online.
• Carlos Garnacho: Multi-touch support in Linux/Xorg/GTK+. Apple made other OS’s jealous with their ability to use two fingers to select and modify content on their smartphones and DMPs (Digital Media Players). Now GNU/Linux users can use it, if they can resolve the dependencies, that is.
• Steve Langasek: Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS released. The Ubuntu devs have released the fourth maintenance update to Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” LTS (Long Term Support). Since Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx” will also be an LTS release this will be the last maintenance release for 8.04 LTS but there are about 70 updates in this update so if you run Ubuntu 8.04 you’ll want to take this update.
• Mike Hommey: Feeling alone. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an experiment to see how much info your browser lets web servers know about you. I’m kind of worried about how much information they report about me.
• NewsAskew: Green Hornet #1 FREE! May 10, 2010… All right all you lovers of comics and Jay & Silent Bob. Kevin Smith has been lending his talents to comic books, including being the writer for the very first of the new series of Green Hornet comic books. Thanks to Free Comic Book Day you have a chance to pick it up without having to shell out any cash for it. And without risking an arrest for shoplifting!
• Nigel Tao: The Road to One Point Zerodom. Nigel is the author of the SuperSwitcher app, and he’s glad to announce that he has a goal of getting Superswitcher 1.0 out in time for the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. I. Can’t. Wait.

I have more things to post but I want to give them their own posts so if you’ll allow a  little commercial promotion, I found a great product that you may join me in wanting to buy.

• QMx Insider: Put a Firefly in Your Pocket for $9.95! Fans of the Joss Whedon show Firefly and it’s follow-up movie Serenity will be glad to know that you can finally own your own Firefly-class ship without having to spend an arm and a leg. Shiny!

Have a most excellent start of February 2010!

Do you still build in SecondLife? Crystal Gadgets has a cool tool you’ll want

I haven’t been on SecondLife much lately (although I do want to get on more) but I still keep up with the blog for Crystal Gadgets, makers of some of our favorite gadgets like the Radar HUD, Prim Finder and Texture Organizer. Today I read a post from their RSS feed which is making me jump on SecondLife today so I can grab their newest tool for builders.

They’ve come out with a tool called the Relative Mover. What does it do? Here’s what they say on the product announcement.

Relative Mover is a tool which moves a collection of objects from one location to another while preserving their relative positions/rotations.

Sounds pretty nice, right? It sounds like something I’d definitely consider buying because I’d use it so often, and the price makes me want to fire up my SL viewer even faster: L$ FREE.

You can visit their product page and click the BUY button to use a landmark to launch SecondLife and visit their inworld store. I’m going to hit that button as soon as I publish this post. Perhaps I’ll see some of you there?

Peng’s links for Tuesday, 26 January

Ack! I meant to write another links post two weeks ago! I hate when things get so busy that I can’t blog for two weeks.

• Ante Karamatić: Is this for real? Ante found some interesting screenies in his sister’s high school IT textbook. They teach IT in high school? Damn, have things changed that much since I graduated in ’78?
• Jordi Mas: gbrainy 1.30. Once again the leading (?) open source smartness app gets an update, now bringing the ability to track your personal records, nine new verbal analogies and a new logic puzzle, as well as an improved scoring algorithm to the mix, as well as better multiplatform support.
• Elizabeth Krumbach: New Leader for the Ubuntu Women Project. I’ve been meaning to congratulate Amber Graner for being named as the leader of the Ubuntu Women Project for about ten days but I kept letting time slip away without blogging it. (I’m surprised that Nanci didn’t post about this, although I know she’s been about as busy as I’ve been so far this decade.) I’ve linked to some of her posts in the past and I’m glad to see that her work as a woman using Ubuntu has opened up this great opportunity for her. The project can only get better, and I don’t think there could be a better woman to lead the project. Amber has also written a post about her new position that you should take the time to read.
• Paul Cutler: Debunking GNOME 3.0 Myths. As news comes out about the upcoming GNOME 3 there are some things that GNOME 3 is supposed to bring that aren’t quite accurate. Paul gives us a great site to bookmark so we have quick access for when we hear something about GNOME 3 that seems almost too good to be true. Or even just a bit far-fetched. Shane Fagan also has an informative post about GNOME 3 and the shell and panel support, two subjects that are finding some confusion in the user community.
• David “Lefty” Schlesinger: Browser Discipline. Lefty has noticed that sometimes he has “a bazillion tabs” open in his browser. He found a nice solution that you may find helpful as well.
• Martin Owens: Ubunchu Chapter 04: Licensing. That’s right, all you manga lovers, there’s a new chapter in the ongoing story of Ubunchu, the world’s first Ubuntu manga written in English. They don’t have a left to-right copy of the newest issue for some reason, but don’t let that stop you from getting up to date on their adventures.
• Alan Pope: MiserWare Beta for Windows as well as Linux. You may have heard about this very nice software title for helping you save money on your electric bills, especially since it was initially a Linux-only app. It’s now available for Windows users, so if this app sounds like something you may be interested in and have a Windows box you should definitely check it out.
• Dustin Kirkland: LCA2010: Day 2, Wellington, New Zealand. While attending an open source software conference in New Zealand Dustin was able to sit in on a presentation that revealed the juicy little tidbit that Avatar, the latest blockbuster that has surpassed Titanic as the highest grossing motion picture ever, used Ubuntu to render their digital effects and graphics. Yes, when I saw this news the geek in me definitely went squeee! Big thanks to Algot Runeman from the Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo for bringing this news to my attention.
• Danny Piccirillo: Download Disobedience, pro-piracy campaign. I meant to pass this along last week because it’s a campaign aimed not at trying to get legal approval for theft of copyrighted materials but to raise awareness about the massive amount of misinformation that’s out there in the name of protecting intellectual property. He also has a nice vid protesting the heavy handed protection of the copyright of that old chestnut “Happy Birthday”.  Yes, it’s illegal to sing that without paying royalties, something Dan Rydell got slapped for doing. (Extra points to Danny for allowing me to include a link to one of my favorite shows. )
• Martin Owens: Generating Calendars. Picture this scenario: You want a hard copy of your calendar for the month but you want to have your birthdays, anniversaries, and other important dates so you can let others consult it. And it can’t look like crap. Martin has info on a nice little app that can do just that, and he’s even been kind enough to share the 2010 calendar he made, but without his personal info. While it’s a bit late for helping you make personalized Chrismukkuh gifts you never know when you may find yourself needing just this kind of program.

Before I close this post I want to pass along some great news to people who want to use the Chromium browser but have heard that there are some annoying bugs that mat be keeping you from using it more often. Issue 24210 – Cannot drag a bookmark into desktop has finally been resolved (at least in the daily builds) so when you find a site you want to return to you can finally drag a bookmark to your desktop where you can remember that you want to revisit the page. In addition, Issue 2238 – Add search engine dialog doesn’t allow “{” (open curly brace) has also been resolved so you can use all those great bookmarklets you used in other browsers. There’s also a great extension for Google Chrome called Chromy that makes it easy to manage your bookmarklets, although it may not be as easy to use as it’s predecessor, Bookmarklets Manager. I just installed Chromy though so I may simply need to play with it a bit longer.

If you’ve begged for forward slash searching it hasn’t been added to Chrome or Chromium, but there’s an extension called Type-ahead-find that brings this function to Chrome although it’s not as easy as the behavior built into Firefox.

Of course I can’t close without extending my congratulations to the New Orleans Saints for winning the NFC Championship game on Sunday. I’m still amazed that they made it this far, especially after all the times they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the past. That gives the Crescent City even more to celebrate, especially with Mardi Gras Day 2010 about 20 days away.

I’ll try to get another post up in a few days, especially since I still have 18 items flagged for blogging. I do know that I may be offline for a day or three next week when I get my new SATA controller card and finally get my 160 GB hard drive installed. It will take some extra time because I’ll be doing a fresh Ubuntu install and creating a fresh user account, so I’ll also need to see about migrating some of my user data to the new account.

People in Massachusetts: It’s time to show up. Again.

As if we could have gone the past month or so without knowing it, today is the special election to decide who takes the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s place in the U.S. Senate. I suspect you could have been living under a rock for the past six months and still known about it. But regardless of how you feel about the candidates today is the day to get off you butt and get to your polling place and cast your vote.

I won’t give my recommendation for who I think you should vote for because Nanci and I have long decided that we’re not going to use this blog for political purposes. But we strongly urge you to go vote for somebody. Even if you want to write in a candidate to vote for (although I didn’t check to see if there was a place to write in a vote when I voted this morning) or even submit a blank ballot with nobody getting your vote it’s important that everyone who is registered to vote in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts cast your vote.

Nanci and I were talking the other day about my writing about how one candidate has really pushed me away by making robocalls each of the last four days (the last two days using the same prerecorded message by a family member) trying to convince me to vote for them, but I felt that was too close to using the blog for political purposes. I may make an edit to this post in a day or so to reveal who the annoying candidate was, but don’t hold me to that.

Yes, the campaign has gotten way too negative in the last week, and it’s gotten away from giving you reasons to vote against someone rather than giving you reasons to vote for someone. But as I’m fond of saying, decisions are made by those who show up, and it’s true. So please, if you’re registered to vote in Massachusetts go to your polling place and take part in the decision making process. If you don’t know where your polling place is you can go to this webpage and use the form to find out where you should cast your ballot.

Unfortunately I’m hearing already that pollsters are already saying that based on preliminary polls in three communities they have a good idea of who should win. (Sorry, I’m not giving you a link to that story.) Personally I think that all the pollsters, especially exit polling, have taken some of the excitement out of elections. When I was a kitteh in New Orleans we would sit around the television in the evening and watch the coverage as the votes were counted. As the evening progressed we eagerly waited to see how our preferred candidate was doing, but now thanks to all the exit polling we have a good idea who won by the time the late news comes on. It’s really become almost anticlimactic as the results have come in since the people on tv are simply confirming what the pollsters are predicting. I may need to find a good place to make that suggestion far enough in advance of the next election cycle to try to get people saying they’d like to see the change too.

I meant to write this post yesterday and have it staged to get published this morning so it would have gone online sooner, but I ended up spending too much time researching an alternate solution to my new hard drive issue. I’ll try to do better for the next election.

Peng’s links for Friday, 15 January

Damn, it’s been a while since I got a links post written. I was checking the things I flagged as wanting to post and I found 69 items going back to 18 December. Yikes!

I won’t go that far back, but I do have some things from late last year that I still want to make sure you all have seen. I’ll try not to let this post get too Jabba-sized.

• Artem Nosulchik: Best of Linux Cheat Sheets. Artem (aka artiomix) has compiled a great list of Linux cheat sheets that are great for everyone from GNU/Linux noobs to folks who gurus. He posted this article back before Chrismukkuh, but info like this is (almost) never outdated.
• Scott Ritchie: The future of Wine sound. If you’ve tried running apps under WINE that uses sound you know it’s definitely not an elegant solution. Scott shows not only why it’s so difficult to get sound working in WINE but also gives us a look at how they are trying to resolve the issue.
• Aaron Toponce: The Meaning of ‘su’. If you’ve done much work in GNU/Linux on the command line you’ve come across su, as well as it’s cousin sudo. If you’ve ever wondered what the hell su/sudo means then Aaron has your answer.
• Alan Pope: Ubuntu Spotted on Doctor Who Set. That’s right, Alan has found one of our favorite GNU/Linux distros on the set of the BBC series featuring our favorite Gallifreyan. Alas, the video he mentions is only available in the UK, but if anyone knows of a URI where those of us on the opposite side of the Pond can see it please leave it in the comments.
• Aaron Toponce: How Travelers Can Protect Their Data. Yes, Aaron posted this a lot closer to the start of the new year but if you do any traveling with your computer then you need to read his article.
• Peter Eisentraut: Remove and Purge. The package manager that Debian (as well as the *ubuntu family of distros) uses makes a difference between removing a package and purging it. The difference is an important one, and Peter wrote a great piece not only about the difference but why it’s important.
• Ubuntu Screencasts: Ubuntu Release Schedule. Edgy Eft? Intrepid Ibex? Jaunty Jackalope? Mads Rosendahl has made a screencast to explain the numbers and names of the various versions of Ubuntu. This one went straight to my E100 four days ago and hasn’t been removed yet. It’s that good.
• Martin Owens: Ubuntu Manual Project. This project is working on a guide to new users of Ubuntu 9.10, and they’re even going to make it available under a Creative Commons license. Martin has written a follow-up post looking at the differences between having a Manual or simply having docs.

This brings me up to earlier this week, and I need to start dinner. Hopefully I can get the rest of the items posted tomorrow. I had some problems this week with my ‘net connections dying, both wired and wireless with neither warning or any good way to fix them, but today we powered down our comps and reset the router and that seems to have done the job. In case I get delayed again, I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Someone’s come up with a way to get drivers to drive, not text

It’s become all to common. Someone gets in an accident, either in their car or while driving public transportation, and someone gets hurt, all because the driver couldn’t remember that they should be driving, not talking or texting. Granted, the solution should be simple. When you get behind the wheel and are putting your seat belt on you also turn off your cell phone, but that’s simply not something most drivers will do.

I saw a story on WBZ last night about a product that will help drivers watch the road, not their phone. Called iZUP (pronounced “eyes-up”), the app for Android and Windows Mobile smart phones uses GPS technology to basically disable your phone if you’re driving more than a preset speed (I believe the default is 5 miles per hour). iZUP was developed after a Connecticut mother was riding with her 16-year-old son who found himself drifting across the dotted yellow lines on Highway 95.

You can set up to three phone numbers that can get through the clock. Of course you can also use your phone to call 911 as you drive, although it’s hoped that if you’re calling 911 to report an accident or other problem you will make sure you’re not about to get in an accident yourself as you drive. If you’re a passenger you can temporarily disable iZUP.

The service costs $4.95 a month or you can subscribe for a full year for $49.95. They do have a family plan for $9.95 a month or $79.95 a year. While I’m not seeing information on when it may be available for the iPhone they do have a list of supported phones and networks, with a way to be notified when your particular phone and carrier are added to their list.

You can read Dawn Hasbrouck’s story I saw on the WBZ website, which also has the video of Dawn’s report on the same page.

Ubuntu Tweak, and it’s website, get a major upgrade

[Updated 13 January to give good news on the UTweak website annoyance. -Peng]

Today I fired up the Update Manager and found that Ubuntu Tweak has been updated to version 0.5.0. Among the changes included is the use of all system-native icons (meaning that instead of seeing icons from Ubuntu Tweak it now uses the icons in your current theme wherever possible), a redesign of the sidebar and titlebar, only showing the sections that your system can use, and the ability to do online syncs with the application center.

For all the new features, as well as a bunch of screenshots, just check out the release announcement on the Ubuntu Tweak blog.

Speaking of the UTweak blog and website, it turns out that they marked the new year with a redesigned website. You can now register with the site itself, which will let you use not only the program but also their website, and use the combination as an even bigger software resource.

There is one slight problem with the new website. It turns out that if your browser window is narrower than 957 pixels the site will be centered in your website with no way to see the content on the left side of the screen. I’ve already let TualatriX know about the problem so hopefully we can get it resolved before long. In the meantime you’ll have to either make your browser wider or simply take it full screen. yes, it can be annoying, but you’re users of Ubuntu Linux so I know you can handle it.

Updated 13 January 10:00am: I just got an email from TualatriX informing me that the website width issue has been fixed. Sure enough, you no longer need to set your browser window to full screen to see all the content. Thanks for the quick work on fixing the issue, TualatriX!

If you’re already a Ubuntu Tweak user you’ll love the update. If you use Ubuntu 9.10 you definitely owe Ubuntu Tweak a look. It’s that good.

Happeh Birfday, Cheezburgahs!

Today the Cheezburger Network (I Can Has Cheezburger (ICHC), Pundit Kitchen, the Fail Blog, and over 30 other sites) is celebrating their third birfday!

I haven’t made any lols, but I see that Peng has made a couple of new ones that I’m going to share with you.

Please go to the Cheezburger site and vote for his lols. The definitely deserve to go on the font page, especially these new ones. Peng and I have been talking about making a page here with his lols but since Peng hasn’t done it yet I’m going to make it. It won’t get updated as quickly as his ICHC My Lolz page does, but it will be an easy way to see his lols when you’re reading our blog.

[UPDATED] Fixes for recent bugs affecting both Chromium and RSS readers on Ubuntu 9.10

[Updated 9 January to include a status update on the Chromium issue. -Peng]
[Updated 10 January to report that the daily build of Chromium is working again. -Peng]

A day or two ago I noticed that I’ve been having problems getting Evolution opened due to a glitch in the RSS plugin that also affects Liferea and my affect other RSS readers. You know you are affected by this bug when you launch your RSS reader in the terminal and see an error that says something like

symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libwebkit-1.0.so.2: undefined symbol: soup_content_decoder_get_type

I found a thread on the Ubuntu Forums that has a great fix for this bugger. It turns out something happened withe the WebKit Team PPA and they have to do a major upgrade. The short form answer is that you should open Symantic and do a search for libsoup. Look for libsoup2.4-1 and libsoup-gnome2.4-1, then select each package one at a time and use Package > Force Version to select these versions:

• libsoup2.4-1_2.28.2-1~kkwkt1
• libsoup-gnome2.4-1_2.28.2-1~kkwkt1

Apply the changes and you should be able to open your app. Please do not accept upgrades for these packages until you see an updated package that’s newer than today (the best place to see that info is to check the PPA link I posted above and check for a published date that’s later than today).

The Evo bug is one I’ve been dealing with for a few days, but after getting the daily updates I was found that Chromium flat won’t run anymore.  Not even Epiphany would run anymore so I had to fire up Firefox to find a bug report. I found Issue 31809: chromium does not start: Inconsistency detected by ld.so. Comment 17 has a fix for us.

Please stop confirming. We have enough info to show that it’s reproducible on a bunch of different ubuntu distros so it’s not something else. the bug is definitely in chromium (or in the way it is built in ubuntu). The error message seems to indicate
something about memory corruption.

In the meantime, you can downgrade to yesterday’s version, or shift to one of the other channels/PPAs:

https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/dev
https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/beta

fta’s comment about not needing to confirm it anymore is because most of the previous comments were “me too” comments. I added the first PPA (the “dev” one) and was able to roll back Chromium to a version that works (version 4.0.266.0 (Developer Build 33992)).

I need to run to the grocery store before the place gets too crazy but I wanted to make sure I had the fixes for these two issues posted before I run out the door.

Updated 9 January 8:15am: I just saw a comment on the Chromium bug that I wanted to pass along.

malloc overrides have been reenabled in r35823, using a different method.

Ubuntu folks: tomorrow’s PPA will not have any malloc overrides and the next day’s will have the new set. Hopefully that will be enough to disambiguate any issues.

At some point, bugdroid will wake up and spam this bug will all the change records

In other words if you’re running Ubuntu don’t take the update today (Saturday), wait until Sunday’s update is available. And before you accept the update pop over to the bug report and see if there’s a confirmation that the bug is fixed for us. I’ll update this post again when I have confirmation that the daily build runs on Ubuntu again. Big thanks to agl for fixing the bug and for making sure Ubuntu users have the status information we need for running this great browser.

Updated 10 January 9:35am: I am very happy to say that the Chromium Daily PPA once again has packages that can be used by users of Ubuntu 9.10. Open your Software Sources (Applications > System > Administration > Software Sources), go to the Other Software tab, and make sure the only Chromium PPA enabled is the PPA for Ubuntu Chromium – Daily Builds (http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu) or a similar source for your system. The PPA should not be the dev or beta source I listed in my original post. Then update your package information with sudo apt-get update and you should see that there are updates available for chromium-browser. As the screenshot on the right shows the version you want to take to is 4.0.295.0~svn20100110r35882-0ubuntu1~ucd1~karmic, specifically looking for “r35882″. Install the updates, close Chromium, and when you relaunch Chromium you should be able to go to about:version and see something like this:

Chromium 4.0.295.0 (Developer Build 35882) Ubuntu

If you can’t launch Chromium after installing version 4.0.295.0~svn20100110r35882-0ubuntu1~ucd1~karmic than I think it’s safe to say that either you didn’t get the proper version or you have a glitch in your old install. Go ahead and remove, but not purge, Chromium with sudo apt-get remove chromium-browser and then reinstall it (sudo apt-get install chromium-browser). That should get your system able to launch Chromium again.

Yooouge thanks to Fabien Tassin (aka fta) and the rest of the Chromium devs for helping us identify, workaround and resolve this issue for us. Each of us owe you at least a round of drinks.