December 15, 2007
by sjvn01
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Certified for Vista is Certifiably Stupid

Whether you like Microsoft one bit, you have to admit Microsoft is pretty darn bright at some thinygs–Excel, Windows XP SP 2, rolling over its competition–but when it comes to multimedia and DRM (Digital Rights Management), Microsoft is dumber than dumb. An excellent case in point is its transformation of Playsforsure into Certified for Windows Vista.

For several years, Microsoft had a multimedia/DRM campaign calls Playsforsure. Now, those playful boys from Redmond claim that it’s all grown up in to Certified for Windows Vista.

Growing up? How can Playsforsure grow-up? Microsoft killed it last year when it introduced its second rate version of an iPod: Zune. Microsoft, which had been claiming that any device that was Playsforsure could play Microsoft DRM media files, announced that its own lead playback device couldn’t play Playsforsure files. Some business moves are so boneheaded that you can’t make them up. This is one of those.

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December 11, 2007
by sjvn01
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Cisco, AT&T and the New Internet

AT&T is spending serious money with Cisco to improve its Internet capabilities. Let’s just hope they’re spending enough.

To prevent our cable and DSL modems from delivering Hayes 1200-baud SmartModem-like performance, the major telecoms, such as AT&T, have been investing in serious infrastructure upgrades. In the most recent one, AT&T announced that it was buying Cisco CRS-1 core routers for 25 of its major Internet backbone sites. At $500,000 to more than $1 million per CRS-1, that’s serious mullah even for AT&T or Cisco.

What do you get for that kind of money? A single CRS-1 port, according to an independent test by Light Reading, can deliver 40 Gbit/s (gigabits per second). In another test, Light Reading was able to test two fully loaded CRS-1 chassis and the pair reached a rather stunning 1.2 Tbit/s (Terabits per second).

Now that, my friend, is fast.

I just hope it’s fast enough.

December 10, 2007
by sjvn01
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New Flash player for Linux adds great features, slows playback

It’s good news, bad news situation when it comes to Adobe’s new Flash player for Linux.

On the plus side, Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3, version identifier 9.0.115.0 was made available for Linux at the same time as Mac and Windows versions. It’s nice to see Linux not being treated as the little brother who only gets the older, hand-me down programs by a major software vendor. An even bigger win for Flash Player users, regardless of their operating system, is that its supports H.264.

H.264 is one of the two major HD (high definition) codices used on Internet multimedia broadcasts.
The other significant HD standard is Microsoft’s implementation of VC-1 in Windows Media Player. Microsoft will also be making VC-1 available in Silverlight, its cross-browser, cross-platform multimedia plug-in. Novell is working with Microsoft to bring Silverlight’s functionality to Linux in a Mono-based project called Moonlight.

Still, H.264 seems to be pulling ahead in overall popularity. H.264 is used in Apple’s QuickTime Movie file format and in HDTV in the MP4 format. It supports such less common formats as M4V, M4A, Mp4v, 3gp, and 3g2. In other words, there is going to be no shortage of HD movies, shorts and so-on for your newly augmented Adobe Flash Player.

It will, however, take a while for much of that content to appear in a format that you can get at. For example, while in theory you can play Apple QuickTime Movie films in the new Flash, getting a stream to feed into say a Firefox-based Flash player is almost impossible.

For audio, Flash now includes support for AAC (Advanced Audio Coding). This includes: AAC Main, AAC LC and SBR (aka HE-AAC). While often thought of as “Apple’s format,” it’s actually part of the MPEG-4 audio compression standard. What Flash doesn’t support is Apple’s FairPlay DRM (Digital Rights Management), so you can forget about legally playing your iTunes Store DRM-protected tunes.

Another problem is that the new Flash really demands a lot from your system. I found it to be slower than the last version in dealing with Adobe’s native Flash format, SWF. It wasn’t that big a deal, but you could tell it was there.

Where things really began to slow down was when I used it with HDTV content that I’d created myself into MP4 using the latest version of Nero 8 Ultra Edition. The official system requirements for playing 24 fps (frames per second) 480p (progressive) video is an Intel Pentium 4 2.33GHz processor, 128MBs of RAM and 64 MB of VRAM (video RAM). For 24 fps 720p, you’ll need a Pentium 4 3GHz. 128MB of RAM and 64MB of VRAM. If you want to really push the limits with 1080p, you’ll need an Intel Core Duo 1.8GHz processor, or equivalent), 128MB of RAM and a graphics card with 64MBs of VRAM.

For my tests, I used two different PCs running openSUSE 10.3. My first system was a HP Pavilion a6040n desktop PC. This is powered by a 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 dual-core processor. It also has 2GBs of 533MHz RAM and a 320GB SATA (Serial ATA) hard drive running at 7,200 rpm. For the display, this PC uses an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with 32MB of dedicated graphics memory. The graphic chip uses main memory for the rest of its requirements.

My second test box was a Gateway GT5622. This PC uses a 1.80GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2160 processor. It has 3GB of DDR2 SDRAM (double-data-rate two synchronous dynamic random access memory), a 400GB SATA II hard drive and a DVD R/W drive. For graphics, it uses the inexpensive Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950, which was set to pull 224MB of RAM from main memory to use as shared video memory.

On both systems, I was able to playback 480p at 24fps. At 720p, however, I began to see an unacceptably slow frame-rate. While some scenes with little action were still displaying at 24 fps, if there was any fast motion on the video, things dropped down to about 16 to 18 fps. As for 1080p, forget about it. The last time I saw video like this was back in the early days of video over the Internet, when just the fact that you could see any video over the Net was amazing.

One of the things I like about the Gateway GT5622’s E2160 processor, however, is that it’s both very easy to overclock and that you can really push its speed. So, after a bit of work, I cranked this PC up to a processor speed of 3GHz. Now, 720p became watchable and 1080p was not quite as good as 720p had been at the default speed of 1.8GHz.

With a good graphics card, say an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 256MB with the official NVIDIA 2D “nv” drivers, a high-performance Linux PC will do very well with Flash. However, most of us aren’t going to be replacing our HDTV sets with HDTV Flash-enabled computers any time soon. However, once Adobe Flash Media Streaming Server 3, which will support H.264 streaming appears sometime in the first quarter of 2008, you can expect to see a lot more, easy to access HDTV Flash content.

Come that day, you’ll also need your Linux system to be using ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). If you’re using OSS (Open Sound System) or GNOME’s ESD (Enlightened Sound Daemon), you won’t get an error message, but you won’t be hearing anything. .
The new Flash is only available for x86/32-bit Linuxes. You can download it as an archived, compressed file, .tar.gz; or as an RPM or YUM package. Ubuntu users should add the multiverse repository to their systems and then download and install flashplugin-nonfree for the updated Flash.

There are also two purely open-source Flash players. These are Gnash and Swfdec. Neither, however, incorporates H.264 support.

Adobe clearly means to claim HDTV for its Flash line of products. At the same time, Adobe has also committed itself to support Linux on the same level as Windows and Mac OS. Slow performance and all, it appears to me that Adobe Flash Player is going to become for Linux multimedia, what OpenOffice is for office software and Firefox is for Web-browsing: the application of choice for Linux users everywhere.

A version of this story first appeared in DesktopLinux.

December 7, 2007
by sjvn01
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BusyBox developers file GPL infringement lawsuit against Verizon

The Software Freedom Law Center announced on Dec. 7 that it has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Verizon Communications on behalf of its clients, the two principal developers of BusyBox.

The suit alleges that Verizon has violated the GNU GPLv2 (General Public License version 2) in its fiber-optic Internet and television service, aka FiOS.

Verizon distributes Actiontec MI424WR wireless routers to FiOS customers. This router contains BusyBox, and under the terms of the GPL, Verizon is obligated to provide the source code of BusyBox to recipients of the device. According to the lawsuit, despite having been contacted by SFLC, Verizon is continuing to distribute BusyBox illegally without source code.

BusyBox is a set of tiny versions of many common Unix/Linux utilities, which are squeezed into a single small executable. By providing replacements for most of the utilities ordinary found in GNU fileutils, shellutils, etc., developers get much of the expected functionality of the GNU utilities without the space requirements. Thus, the BusyBox programs are used in many–perhaps most–embedded Linux-based devices. A non-comprehensive list of devices that rely on BusyBox range from SBC (single board computers) to DJ mixing consoles to car engine computers to music servers to Wi-Fi AP (access points).

The complaint requests that an injunction be issued against Verizon and that damage and litigation costs be awarded to the plaintiffs. A copy of the complaint, as filed Dec. 6 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, is available at the SFLC site in PDF format.

“Our clients licensed BusyBox under the GPL to ensure that all users of the program can access and modify its source code,” said Dan Ravicher, the SFLC‘s legal director. “Because Verizon chose not to respond to our concerns, we had no choice but to file a lawsuit to ensure that they comply with the GPL.”

The SFLC informed both Verizon and Actiontec of this violation on Nov. 16. According to Ravicher, ” Our only objective is to ensure our clients’ rights are respected, whether that requires litigation or not. In this case, if we just wanted to litigate, we could have also named Actiontec (Verizon’s upstream supplier) as a defendant, but we chose not to do so because they responded to our initial communications (as opposed to Verizon who has simply ignored us) and we are now in what we believe are productive conversations with Actiontec about their compliance.”

This Swiss-army knife of embedded Linux has been used illegally before in other devices. Monsoon Multimedia recently settled its GPL violation of BusyBox with the SFLC and BusyBox developers. On Nov. 20, the SFLC and the BusyBox developers also brought suit against Xterasys and High-Gain Antennas for violating the GPLv2. As Rob Landley, a BusyBox developer and a plaintiff in all these lawsuits said at the time about Xterasys and High-Gain Antennas, “We let companies do what they like with BusyBox on their hardware, and what we asked in return was that they let us reproduce what they’ve done with BusyBox on our hardware. That’s the deal embodied in the GPL.”

This makes the fourth GPL enforcement lawsuit filed by SFLC on behalf of BusyBox developers Erik Andersen and Rob Landley. The case against Monsoon Multimedia was settled out of court in October, with Monsoon agreeing to remedy its prior violation, ensure future compliance and financially compensate the plaintiffs.

A version of this story was first published in Linux-Watch.

December 5, 2007
by sjvn01
0 comments

Linspire’s CNR.com beta finally goes live

It’s been over a year since Linspire announced a free version of the CNR (Click’N’Run) software management system for its own Linuxes — Freespire and Linspire — as well as others, such as Ubuntu, but the project is finally open to all as a beta.

According to the new Linspire CEO, Larry Kettler, Linspire is “excited to release the beta version of CNR.com.” This is a “free service that provides desktop Linux users one-click access to thousands of free and commercial software applications.”

CNR has long offered this kind of package management for Linspire, the company’s eponymous desktop Linux distribution. This version, however, works not with just Freespire 2.0 and Linspire 6.0, but with Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10 as well. That’s not as much of a stretch as it first appears. Both Freespire and Linspire are based on Ubuntu.

Unlike earlier versions of CNR, where most of the work was done on the Linux PC, the new CNR does 99 percent of its work on its server side. On the desktop, a user only needs the new lightweight client to install, uninstall and update software programs and communicate between the Linux desktop and CNR.com.

In addition, previous versions of CNR were proprietary closed-source programs. The new CNR client is open-sourced and utilizes open and publicized APIs to communicate with CNR.com. If all goes well with the beta, Linspire said it plans on releasing CNR clients for Debian, Fedora and OpenSUSE as well in the near future.

Behind the scenes, the actual downloading and installation uses standard .deb and .rpm files. The difference is that CNR presents users with a Web-based catalog of programs. A user can then simply pick a program and click on it, and it and its dependency programs are automatically downloaded and installed. This way, new Linux users need never deal with the complexity of more manual software updating and installation programs.

At the same time, CNR.com provides several new interactive features that allow users to help contribute and build software communities together. Users can add and editing the software product pages by adding screenshots, user reviews, ratings, descriptions, categorizations and release notes. The site also includes product-specific forum discussions and wiki documents, as well as the main CNR interactive forum discussions and community support. Linspire is hoping that users will uses these interactive forums to ask questions, give answers, provide feedback and share ideas.

For software publishers, CNR.com provides a free Publisher Program that enables vendors to quickly get their software titles into CNR.com. This service is not just for pure open-source programs. Vendors that create proprietary programs that work on Linux are also welcome to offer their wares on the site.

The site itself is free to all users. It already includes dozens of commercial Linux software titles for sale, such as Sun Microsystems’ StarOffice, Parallels Workstation, Virtual Bridges’ Win4Lin, CodeWeavers’ CrossOver Office and TransGaming Technologies’ Cedega.

By providing a free, Linux-agnostic, centralized site for finding, researching, installing and managing Linux software, Linspire hopes to make CNR.com the software “shopping” site for Linux programs. In the best of all possible outcomes, the company said, Linspire would like to see CNR become for Linux programs what Download.com and TuCows already are for Windows freeware and shareware: the first choices for people looking for new, inexpensive programs.

Current Linspire and Freespire users must update to the new CNR client to install software from the site. These clients, as well as the ones for Ubuntu, can be downloaded from the main CNR site.

December 5, 2007
by sjvn01
0 comments

Likewise open-sources Active Directory authentication for Linux

Like it or lump it, Microsoft’s Active Directory is a very popular network directory, and thus, management system. It’s been possible to use AD for Linux, but it was never easy. Now, Likewise Software, formerly Centeris, a leader in mixing and matching Windows and Linux network solutions, has announced the first open-source version of release of version 4.0 of its cross-platform authentication software: Likewise Open.

This is an open-source community project that enables core AD authentication for Linux. Likewise Open’s source code is available today under the GPLv3. With this code, experienced Linux users and Linux vendors can integrate open-sourced AD Linux authentication into their distributions. The company has already packaged versions of Likewise Open for openSUSE 10.3, Fedora 8, and Ubuntu 7.10.

With Likewise Open, users will be able to use a single log-in and password for both their Windows and Linux PCs to gain access to a Windows or Samba-based network resources. The program also enables credential caching for offline log-on in the event of temporary loss of connectivity to the Active Directory Domain Controller. Last, but not least, users can also use this single log-in for a SSO (single sign on) for SSH (Secure Shell) and PuTTY sessions.

For administrators, Likewise Open will enable them to apply AD security settings on individual Linux machines to enforce password complexity and aging. In the future, it will be possible to use other AD management tools on Linux systems.

Gerald Carter, a senior Likewise Software developer and long-time member of the Samba core development team, will serve as the Likewise Open’s project director.

“Likewise Open represents our commitment to providing solutions that foster true interoperability between Windows and Linux for enterprise organizations,” Carter said in a statement. “Making Likewise Open available will help a number of organizations that have had difficulties with authentication across multiple platforms. We look forward to working with our technology partners and the open-source community to continue to improve authentication and access management solutions for mixed network environments.”

This could be a major step forward for Linux system acceptance in businesses using Windows-centric network. “Likewise Open will allow NIH [National Institutes of Health] to reduce costs by joining our Linux systems to Active Directory,” said Jeff Plum, a senior engineer at NIH. “By working with the open-source community, Likewise Software has made it easy for Linux distributors to include Active Directory authentication as part of the operating system and easy for centers like ours to deploy the solution.”

At the same time, Likewise Software isn’t doing this on its own and hoping that Linux companies will follow its lead. The company has already formally partnered with Red Hat and Canonical, Ubuntu’s sponsor and informally with Novell. Likewise Open will be incorporated into the next versions of Ubuntu, Red Hat and SUSE.

“We are excited about the Likewise Open project and the solutions that it will provide Canonical’s enterprise customers and other major deployments of Ubuntu,” said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu project, in a statement. “Likewise Open allows us to provide end users of the Ubuntu operating system the ability to join their systems to Microsoft Active Directory for user authentication. We look forward to the debut of Likewise Open in the April release of Ubuntu 8.04 Long Term Support.”

Red Hat is on board too. “Likewise Open is an important development for our enterprise customers who wish to use open-source software to enable users of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to authenticate against Active Directory,” said Karl Wirth, Red Hat’s director of security business. “We plan to ship Likewise Open together with Samba in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2.”

After an early evaluation of Likewise Open by eWEEK’s Jason Brooks, it’s easy to see why the Linux vendors are enthusiastic about Likewise Open. While not perfect, it makes integrating AD and Linux systems much easier than the ad hoc, duct tape measures often used in the past to get AD and Linux working together.

The company also announced the release of the next commercial version of its AD/Linux and other operating system integration program: Likewise
Enterprise 4.0.

“The non-Windows desktop group policy advancements in Likewise Enterprise 4.0 are a significant advancement,” said Guy Lunardi, Novell’s senior product manager for the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.

“With thousands of group policies to offer, Novell and Likewise Software are working with some of our largest SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop customers to lock down their desktops with Likewise Enterprise, for increased security and control. The ability to manage SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop machines using existing Active Directory group policies makes it even easier for customers to deploy Linux desktops alongside their existing Windows machines.”

Likewise Enterprise 4.0 includes more than 500 Active Directory Group Policies for managing Linux, Unix and Mac servers and desktops. These include policies for security, authentication and identification, log-on, display, message, logging and audit, file system and tasks.

It also includes Linux desktop support. With this, administrators can set Linux desktop user configuration settings from AD. Thus, managers can centrally manage Linux desktops, easily set consistent group policy, and lock down desktop security with their familiar AD management tools. You can apply settings for the most popular Linux desktop applications such as Firefox and Evolution.

You don’t have to manage AD from Windows with Likewise installed. Likewise makes it possible for Linux and Unix administrators to manage AD from their systems with the Likewise Administrative Console. This is a pluggable framework that provides MMC (Microsoft Management Console)-like functionality and runs on any Linux platform.

Likewise Enterprise 4.0 also allows local network managers to organize branch office organizational unit-level deployment and administration without enterprise domain administrative privileges. In addition, Likewise Enterprise 4.0 streamlines the customer’s ability to allow users and groups to access resources by linking cells to share attributes across organizational units.
A version of this story first appeared in Linux-Watch.

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