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11 December 2008

heise online news 11/12/2008


heise online news 11/12/2008
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Overview of the news from the past 24 hours
heise online news
JetBrains Meta Programming System aids the creation of domain-specific languages

Software vendor JetBrains has presented the beta version of a new development environment that allows users to create their own programming languages and then create programs in them

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Amarok 2.0 audio player for Linux released

After a two year development period, the programming team behind the popular KDE audio player have released Amarok version 2.0. As it's a complete rewrite for the new KDE 4 desktop, many of the functions from the previous version are absent

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Chrome is ready for prime-time, says Google exec

Google's Chrome web browser will hit version 1.0 next month, probably in order to facilitate OEM bundling deals

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Alfresco and Joomla present CMIS interface

Alfresco and Joomlatools have presented an interface based on the standard for Content Management Interoperability Services. Alfresco:Joomla! allows users to access the Alfresco CMS via Joomla

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Black Duck takes on Open Source Myths

Black Duck Software have analysed their database of 170,000 open source projects to "bust some myths" about open source

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Sugar Labs joins the Software Freedom Conservancy

Sugar Labs moves under the supporting umbrella of the Software Freedom Conservancy

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Email client Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 available

The new version of the email program adds a host of detailed improvements, such as background IMAP message downloading, tabs in the inbox and integration with external address books

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Sun closes "network.com" grid computing service to new customers

Sun has placed a holding page on the front of its network.com utility computing site, but the company is planning to relaunch it with a larger range of new services and facilities

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Security vulnerability in GNOME desktop VNC client

The Vinagre VNC client contains a format string vulnerability that can be exploited by attackers operating manipulated VNC servers to inject malicious code onto users' systems

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Jaspersoft updates its free Business Intelligence Suite

Version 3.1 of the open source BI suite adds new features - particularly for visualisation.

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VLC Media Player binaries updated to fix vulnerability

The VideoLAN project release VLC 0.9.8a binaries for Windows and Mac OS X, closing a previously reported vulnerability

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Open Handset Alliance gets 14 new members

The Open Handset Alliance has just announced 14 new members, including Sony Ericsson, Vodafone, Toshiba, ARM and Garmin

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Third Zero Day exploit appears

Zero day exploits, like buses, come in threes, and a third exploit, this time of Wordpad, has turned up after Patch Tuesday

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IWF lift Wikipedia ban

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has removed Wikipedia from its filter list after reconsidering the ban caused by an image appearing in an article about the Scorpions Virgin Killer album

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Two new zero-day exploits dent Microsoft's Patch Tuesday

Several Windows components, the Windows Vista search feature, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer and Visual Basic are updated, but the updates are overshadowed by two zero-day exploits for IE7 and SQL Server 2000

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Re: Fedora Weekly News #155

On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:37:05 +0100, "Thorsten Leemhuis"

> Maybe give it a small test in one of the next issues and ask readers
> what they prefer?

Makes sense. I'll try it out for the next issue at least.


> I for one read most of the important fedora lists. But not all -- I for
> example stopped reading ambassadors and marketing some years ago and
> would like to rely on FWN to highlight important discussions in a short
> manner (if there are any); if I then find the topic interesting I'll
> jump to the list to read the details

To be honest I have no idea what our reader profiles really are, but
given that you're one of the few people to give feedback I'm going to go
with a trial run of what you suggest and then see if we get masses of
complaints. I suspect that you may be more in tune with what is going on
than many of our readers however and there may be a tension between
serving your needs and those on the other end of the spectrum: people
that don't read much in the way of the mailing lists at all, let alone
Bugzilla.

[snip]

> > I would prefer all the links at the bottom of each item.
>
> For text only: Sure. But in HTML/wiki I'd prefer to not see them at all.

OK, we can do that I think. Just a numbered reference which is an
anchor to the actual link should be something we can do. But for the
plaintext mailing we'll append the links below each item instead of
below each paragraph.

>
> > [...]
> >> The OpenSUSE weekly news
> >> http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/49
> >> look much more professional,
> > For what value of "professional"? [...]
>
> (a) looks way better
> (b) you get more information without scrolling
> (c) it's not that lengthy, which imho is a big plus in todays world, as
> there are so many information you get offered in different places, hence
> if I get to many details I'll move on elsewhere

Points taken on board.

>
> >> are likely a whole less work and they even
> >> get them translated because they are shorter/focus on the more important
> >> things.
> > "More important" than what? My impression is that you'd prefer it if
> > there were no "Developments" or "Virtualization" sections and simply a
> > list of what gets posted to @fedora-announce and some entries from
> > Planet.
>
> *I* for one would like to see the ten or twelve (?) most important
> things *for the overall project* mentioned briefly and (in addition)
> quick one-line links to other things that are also important, but do not
> qualify as "most important".

Hmmm. It's going to be a difficult judgement call to be able to discern
what is important "for the overall project". I don't think I'd want to
try to do that. Nearly everything on Developments has implications for
the overall project. I see the Developments beat as more or less
following where the interest and action is, mainly by the volume of
posting on a topic. If you, or anyone else, can spot things which should
definitely be covered for an upcoming issue then I'd appreciate a
friendly ping to make sure I'm on the job. I've tried to do things like
cover FESCo deliberations a little so that the context of some of the
discussions makes sense to readers who *don't* follow all the important
threads, let alone IRC channels. I've realized several weeks that
important topics have been neglected, but that's only in retrospect.

>
> The Art team for example does great work, but most of the stuff in
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/LatestIssue#Artwork afaics is only of
> interest for members of the Art team. Hence it should not be in the FWN;
> instead it could go to their list if they want to sum up things.

I really don't think I agree with that. I like reading about what goes
on in the Art team as I'm not subscribed to their lists (nor am I going
to subscribe), so it's valuable to me to get a quick overview of what
they do. Similarly with Virtualization there is no way that I could
digest the vast amount of change that's happening and I don't want to be
on another list, so getting a weekly digest is absolutely invaluable to
me.

[snip]

> Well, yes, I don't like it very much -- mainly because it for me
> contains simply to many information to read each week. But I like the
> general idea of FWN and that's why I shared my point of view. I didn#t
> want to discourage or disappoint you.

As I said before, I really do appreciate the feedback. As Max mentioned
in another email your opinion carries a good deal of weight in the
project! Apart from that you would be surprised how little feedback we
get from anyone. I'm thinking about what you've said and will certainly
take a shot at making the Development beat more concise. Apart from
anything else it's a mammoth effort to put it out each week. Thanks for
sharing your perspective on FWN and I hope that the upcoming issues will
be a little more to your taste!

Best wishes,
--
Oisin Feeley
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley

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Re: Fedora Weekly News #155

On Wed, 10 Dec 2008, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:

> Be careful what you say -- I suppose some people in fedora will call
> me the always-ranting-guys or something like that ;-)

Thorsten, of all the people in Fedora, you have earned the right to say
whatever you want, whenever you want. :)

--Max

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Re: Fedora Weekly News #155

On 09.12.2008 15:43, Oisin Feeley wrote:
> On Tue, 09 Dec 2008 07:55:01 +0100, "Thorsten Leemhuis"
>
>> I wanted to put it in proper words, but I didn't get around to it, so
>> maybe I'll do it just quickly here:
> It's really appreciated that you took the time to give some feedback
> Thorsten.

Be careful what you say -- I suppose some people in fedora will call me
the always-ranting-guys or something like that ;-)

>> I like the FWN in general. But I noticed I often do not read them. They
>> for me are to long and contain way to many details -- the section "The
>> PATH to CAPP Audits" and "The Looming Py3K Monster" for example contain
>> a lot of information (which were hard work to collect),
> I've frequently wondered about that. Does anyone else agree that it's
> too long?

Maybe give it a small test in one of the next issues and ask readers
what they prefer?

> One problem with making things much shorter is that we can
> either produce what is essentially a simple list of topics, i.e.
>
> === CAPP Certification Requirements Cause Unease ===
>
> Changes made in 2005 to the permissions of shadow-utils tools in order
> to achieve CAPP certification were called[1] into question. It seems
> that they may complicate many of what are claimed to be the common use
> cases of Fedora. Steve Grubb, the shadow-utils maintainer, defended the
> permissions and explained CAPP certification.
>
> [1] Link to start of thread.

I would like something like that. That afaics should be enough to make
those readers took at the archives that are interested in more details.
And afaics it's a whole less work then try to sum up the most important
bits of a discussion as it was done in #155

>> but if I want
>> that in-depth details I'll go and read the thread on the list directly.
> Why wouldn't you just go and skim the archives directly then? It's easy
> enough to see what might be the interesting threads.

I for one read most of the important fedora lists. But not all -- I for
example stopped reading ambassadors and marketing some years ago and
would like to rely on FWN to highlight important discussions in a short
manner (if there are any); if I then find the topic interesting I'll
jump to the list to read the details

>> I think a little bit less (1/3 or 1/4 the length of what it is now)
>> could me more/better here.
> 1/3 or 1/4 would actually be a hell of a lot more work. The choices are
> either: 1) short, nearly content-free summaries which essentially
> mention the thread and nothing else, or 2)an attempt to provide an
> unpredjudiced digest.

What I meant is like something like "1)"; but sometimes discussions in
subthreads go into a sightly or completely different direction. Then it
might be worth to mention them as well. That is afaics done already now,
but it's done for way to much subthreads imho.

> [...]
>> And all those links in the text with sections like
>> ----
>>> [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00420.html
>>>
>>> [2] http://libvirt.org/remote.html
>>>
>>> [3] http://www.avahi.org
>> ----
>> IMHO make it really hard to read.
> I would prefer all the links at the bottom of each item.

For text only: Sure. But in HTML/wiki I'd prefer to not see them at all.

> [...]
>> The OpenSUSE weekly news
>> http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/49
>> look much more professional,
> For what value of "professional"? [...]

(a) looks way better
(b) you get more information without scrolling
(c) it's not that lengthy, which imho is a big plus in todays world, as
there are so many information you get offered in different places, hence
if I get to many details I'll move on elsewhere

>> are likely a whole less work and they even
>> get them translated because they are shorter/focus on the more important
>> things.
> "More important" than what? My impression is that you'd prefer it if
> there were no "Developments" or "Virtualization" sections and simply a
> list of what gets posted to @fedora-announce and some entries from
> Planet.

*I* for one would like to see the ten or twelve (?) most important
things *for the overall project* mentioned briefly and (in addition)
quick one-line links to other things that are also important, but do not
qualify as "most important".

The Art team for example does great work, but most of the stuff in
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/LatestIssue#Artwork afaics is only of
interest for members of the Art team. Hence it should not be in the FWN;
instead it could go to their list if they want to sum up things. That
how I did it for EPEL when I was the EPEL Steerign Committee Chair; the
most important thins from those reports sometimes were mentioned in the
FWN (which also linked to the reports)

But again: that's just my option and maybe I'm totally alone with that.

>> Just my 2 cent as seldom reader. I thought you guys maybe wanted to
>> know. And don't let my option confuse you to much. Maybe it's just me.
> Specifics would be useful (like the comment about the links), otherwise
> I'm just left with the disappointed feeling that you don't like FWN.

Well, yes, I don't like it very much -- mainly because it for me
contains simply to many information to read each week. But I like the
general idea of FWN and that's why I shared my point of view. I didn#t
want to discourage or disappoint you.

> [...]

Cu
knurd

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