Everybody posts about applications to install after upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. That’s interesting, and some applications in those posts are quite useful. But those are just lists of applications like any other “Top 10 Ubuntu applications” list. I’m not saying they are not interesting, I’ll even post some links to such posts from other blogs (look at the bottom of the post) I really liked, but to get there, you must firstly fix everything that’s not working for you, tweak some things and so on. From the tweaks in the post: Fix the Internet connection, ctrl + alt + backspace behavior, update manager behavior, disable the login sound, enable icons in menus and buttons, fix the popping sound, browser specific tweaks, etc.

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arstechnica: Want 50Mbps Internet in your town? Threaten to roll out your own

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A home computer makes an ideal appliance to store and stream music. The purpose of a music server is to deliver tracks when requested by a client. The server can deliver music to machines over a local area network as well as computers connected over the internet.

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For the past two years we have hosted an annual Linux Graphics Survey in which we ask well over 20,000 users each time their video card preferences, driver information, and other questions about their view of the Linux graphics stack. This year we are hosting the survey once again to allow the development community to get a better understanding of the video hardware in use, what open-source and closed-source drivers are being used, and other relevant information that will help them and the Linux community.

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The following post us by guest author Edo Segal (@edosegal), an entrepreneur who has launched and sold several companies, including Relegence to AOL. Today, he runs his Incubator/Investment vehicle Futurity Ventures, which recently launched a new search engine for wisdom.

Media scarcity is dead. In the future my son will have a flash drive that he will pay $29 for that will have the capacity to hold all movies and music ever released by a major label, studio or tv/cable network. It will take 30 seconds to clone the data over the network to a friend who will pay $14.99 for a device with double capacity a year later. How does the media industry survive such a coming disruption?

For many of us that have been in this game for a while, the word “convergence” harbors some shameful vibes. It conjures up many false hopes, dashed dreams and misfires. Nevertheless, I would contend that convergence is upon us and it has arrived from an unexpected delivery man: Steve Jobs. Apple has created a media consumption experience that has reduced friction to such a point that soon the consumer will not know if he is buying music, a movie or a game. The notion of App is changing. The lines between these different forms of media are quickly blurring and soon will be completely artificial. Already these distinctions are merely fossilized conventions that stem from consumers’ discovery habits. As those evolve, like learning that it is easier to go to Amazon and search to find a product than going to aisle 9 at the store. The coming confusion of the consumption experience where a user won’t care or know if what they are buying is a movie, a game or a music track presents vast opportunity.

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A quarterly review of opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM, including the upgrades to the new versions of Apache OFBiz, Tomcat, and Funambol, and the recent community wish list for opentaps.

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[Eustice Scrubb] has posted some videos and pictures of a robotic “eye stalk” that he’s building. It looks like the final version is using 3 servos in an arrangement like tendons through a slinky jr. The ping-pong ball on the top has a BlinkM inside it. You can see a video after the break that [...]

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Within this decade, we’ve gone from 0 to 7 states having anti-cruelty laws for animals in agribusiness laws.

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Within this decade, we’ve gone from 0 to 7 states having anti-cruelty laws for animals in agribusiness laws.

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Within this decade, we’ve gone from 0 to 7 states having anti-cruelty laws for animals in agribusiness laws.

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According to a report in the French language publication 01net, the French General Directorate of Public Finance (DGFiP) is switching to Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client for 130,000 users. The switch is happening as part of a merger of two French tax authorities which had different email systems, The Directorate General Tax (DGI) which used Lotus Notes and the Directorate General of Public Accountancy (DGCP) which used Microsoft Outlook.

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It’s time to put on the Swami hat and predict just what we have in store for 2010 and beyond. Considering all of the movement in the gadget world in the past few months, I’m fairly sure most of this going to be accurate. Given the current status of some of these technologies, it’s hard to prognosticate very far out but there are a few things that have become apparent over the past year, especially the rise of Android and our expectations for the iPad.

Without further ado… the envelope please:

Apple TV -> 27-inch iMac -> Wall Mount for 27-inch iMac

It’s sad but true: Apple doesn’t care about Apple TV. All the real brain power is going to the desktop and laptop and probably onto the iPad. They’ve made it clear with the 27-inch iMac that they can make a high-resolution screen and powerful computer inside of a case the thickness of a college textbook. Who needs a TV, let alone an Apple TV?

The obvious conclusion here is that the 27-inch iMac becomes a real Apple TV. The Mac Mini already makes a great multi-media system and a quick update to FrontRow, now considered abandonware, may make it a great 10-foot interface.

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[Alan] over at HackedGadgets.com has been doing a “Name the Thing” contest where he occasionally posts an image and people try to figure out what it is. We’ve seen similar posts on some other web sites too. We usually don’t post them here because they’re not only not a hack, they’re usually not even projects. This one, [...]

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LinuxCertified Inc, a leading provider of Linux training and services, today announced its next Linux Device Driver Development Course class to be held in South Bay, CA from November 9th – 11th, 2009.

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After letting it sit around for about 3 years, [Blake] decided it was time to fix his broken 15″ television. A little trouble shooting showed the problem was with the inverter. The backlight would come on for a few seconds, off for a few seconds, then repeat. By freeing the Magnavox 15MF400T from its metal [...]

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By allowing Dobbs to use the incident to level spurious attacks at his critics, CNN is is seriously undermining its claim to be "the most trusted name in news."

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The Register: California man accused of DOSing site he founded

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The Register: FBI and SOCA plot cybercrime smackdown

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Security Fix: Former anti-virus researcher turns tables on industry

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Freescale Semiconductor has begun taking orders for a Power Architecture development platform for Android-based products, opening a new category of embedded devices to Google’s open-source mobile operating system.

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A Qt developer has brought a piece of KDE to Maemo. After plasmoids, this week brings the Plasma desktop. Also a KDE Maemo mailing list.

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For the conservatives at The Weekly Standard, the story was simply too good to be fact-checked.

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This update includes enhancements to the JIT compiler, garbage collection technology, JVM serviceability, and an updated XML parser for Java.

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An open memo from the U.S. DoD declares that open source software is no worse than traditional software, perhaps even useful.

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Despite claims by advanced users, confusion abounds when trying to run two OSes. Matt Hartley offers some possible solutions.

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The mobile phone market suffered a six percent drop in shipments year to year, but saw a 5.6 percent improvement over the previous quarter, says IDC. Meanwhile, Motorola, which showed a 6.4 percent yearly drop, according to IDC, posted 3Q earnings that beat analyst predictions.

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In response to the news this week that the city of Los Angeles is going Googlefied with a $7.25 million, five-year deal to adopt Gmail, Google Calendar and other applications, Novell’s blog has an interesting rebuttal. Of course, the reason for the city’s switch to Google’s corner of the cloud is to save money that it would otherwise spend on expensive software licenses, and it will save. Still, the Novell blog post is intriguing because it’s a missive from an open source-focused company criticizing the Los Angeles decision with barbs frequently aimed at open source solutions. It claims that L.A. should have opted for Novell’s fee-based Groupwise solution. Huh?

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Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux

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Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux

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Want to be the head of Barnesandnoble.com’s international business? Because they’re definitely hiring a whole team, and they’re starting at the top.

Recruiting firm Russell Reynolds Associates is representing Barnes & Noble in a search for the “head of their international business,” according to a source who was contacted about the position. The job entails building the international business for BN.com from scratch, hiring the team and “building the infrastructure outside the U.S.” They prefer the executive live in New York, but Europe is ok, too. Global ecommerce experience is preferred.

Barnes & Noble is no Amazon, but it is a billion dollar company and they have an upcoming ebook reader that kicks the Kindle’s butt (it’s so easy to love unlaunched products, isn’t it?).

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