Linux Boxee users may be able to upgrade to the new version of Boxee, version 0.9.11.5777M (April 26, 2009 build), by launching the Update Manager tool (Menu > System > Administration > Update Manager) on their Ubuntu systems. If that doesn’t do the trick, you can open up the Synaptic package manager (Menu > System > Administration > Synaptic), search for boxee using the “Quick Search” function, and then reinstall it by right-clicking on the program’s name and marking it for reinstallation.

f all else fails, remove the package (right-click and mark for removal) and then install it fresh. Another approach is via apt-get from the command line, using a string of commands such as…

sudo apt-get update;apt-get remove boxee; apt-get clean; apt-get install boxee

Once updated, Boxee will exhibit an updated skin and a new “App Box” through which new applications, including Hulu feeds and more, can be added.
The new Hulu function is not as clean as the original version, which was more tightely integrated into Boxee’s excellent and easy-to-use 10-foot user interface.

The current support for Hulu, an effort to sidestep Hulu’s content redistribution concerns, leverages Boxee’s RSS feeds in conjunction with a customized mozilla browser engine that’s part of the latest Boxee release. Evidence of this less-integrated approach is seen as Hulu’s home page momentarily flashes on the screen just prior to Hulu’s content menu (shown above) appearing on the screen.

Still lacking in the latest Linux release, however, is the long-awaited addition of Netflix movie and TV show streaming for subscribers to Netflix’s monthly service (with unlimited program streaming available for as little as $10 per month).

Boxee is available for free download from www.Boxee.tv, and is free to use. It’s available in Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and AppleTV versions.

In 2007 the US planned to put a federal prosecutor in Budapest, Hungary, to “assist in the coordination of the enforcement of intellectual property laws”. Almost immediately action was taken against some BitTorrent and warez sites operating in the country.

In 2008 it was recommended in an International Intellectual Property Alliance report that Hungary should remain on a piracy ‘watch list’ for that year. The reasons were wide and varied, but included were problems related to widespread ‘pay to leech’ torrent sites, and pay for access warez sites. “It is difficult to energize police and customs officials to investigate Internet cases because Hungarian court decisions are not a deterrent,” said the report.

The authorities, undeterred by the lack of a court deterrent, have been involved in various raids and site closures ever since, and this year is no different. In mid April, Hungarian police carried out raids on four BitTorrent trackers including Bitlove, BitMusic and Indep - and shut them down. In the same operation they closed down warez sites and a significant source of spam. The police arrested up to ten individuals, eventually detaining six for further questioning.

The reason that police were able to move so forcefully against these sites is because they were operated on a purely commercial basis. Unlike most regular torrent sites or warez blogs, users paid for access via premium SMS. The operators were pretty unpopular in the ‘regular’ BitTorrent community too, having had conflict with other sites.

Over 40 servers were confiscated in the end, filled with 250TB of data. Here are the police photos from the raid, and remember folks; paying for warez is like paying for oxygen, it’s unnecessary and it gives decent pirates a bad name

The SoHo suite supports iPhone and iPod Touch, Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Symbian.

The suite includes Zoho Mail, Calendar, Writer, Sheet, Show and Creator. The company also offers a wide range of other apps on the Web that are not supported in the mobile version.

Here’s the press release.

Previously, Zoho was available only on iPhone and Windows Mobile.

To try the service, which is free, visit the Zoho mobile site on your cell phone: http://mobile.zoho.com

Released mid-week, as is normal for the second phase of the development cycle, the third pre-release version of Linux 2.6.30 included mostly minor enhancements and fixes, although there were two code restructures.

The interminable discussions of the Ext3 and Ext4 file systems and the way they interact with other kernel subsystems have largely subsided. The H Open has reported on the early stages of these discussions – the occasionally abrasive discussion on the LKML (Linux Kernel Mailing List) continued for a further week, with a total of 650 emails, not counting other threads triggered by the discussion.

The debate has been far from fruitless and has led to the development of various modifications which Torvalds has integrated, in some cases immediately, into the main development tree leading to Linux 2.6.30. This part of the “What’s coming in 2.6.30″ Kernel Log series gives an overview of these and many other changes to the code for the various file systems supported by Linux.

Access time

At a relatively early stage of the above discussion, an old, previously much discussed issue affecting all file systems once more reared its head – when and how frequently should the kernel update a file’s atime (last access time)? This information is of importance to only a handful of applications and each update of the atime requires a write process. This not only has a time overhead, it is also somewhat surplus to requirements for SSDs and laptops running on battery.

Spurred on by this, Matthew Garrett has produced a number of patches which result in the kernel now updating last access time just once a day (Relative atime/relatime). It took Linus Torvalds just a few hours to make this one of the first patches to be incorporated into the main development tree following the release of 2.6.29. A further patch from Garrett makes relatime the default. The old style behaviour can be restored using strictatime.

But even these changes, which many kernel hackers have long been calling for, did not satisfy everyone – Valerie Aurora (formally Henson) has listed various criticisms on her blog. Expect this one to run and run.

Latencies

A user reporting long latencies when applications use fsync() to flush the Ext3 write buffer when the kernel is working through large read processes prompted a discussion on LKML. The problem has been known about for several months, but the available workarounds were somewhat controversial.

Ext[2/3/4] file system developer Ted Ts’o put the blame squarely on application developers who, he opined, could save the file system a deal of work with a little more prudence. Other kernel developers disagreed. Ts’o has, however, already developed a number of less controversial patches for Ext3 and Ext4 which, according to his measurements, reduce latency and which have subsequently been incorporated into 2.6.30.

Subsequent tests by Torvalds, however, determined that some of the blame for latencies must be placed on the block layer’s CFQ scheduler. Jens Axboe analysed the problem and quickly developed more changes which further reduce latencies. This will in some cases increase the speed of desktop systems not just measurably, but tangibly.

Latency II

Debate and details

This article only describes the most critical points and outcomes of the discussions on Ext3 and Ext4 mentioned above and their interaction with other kernel subsystems such as the block layer. Linux Weekly News (LWN.net) has taken a more detailed look at the discussion and the changes arising from it in the articles That massive filesystem thread and Solving the ext3 latency problem.

The articles “Linux Storage and Filesystem workshop” Day 1 and Day 2 also in part explore the issues discussed. The article ext4 and data loss looks at the problem of potential data loss in Ext4.

Another major factor in the problem of latencies is Ext3’s habit of loading the file system as ‘data=ordered’ by default. Ted Ts’o has even publicly repented of having taken the decision to make this mode the default several years ago.

Though it initially looked as if the debate would be fruitless, Torvalds adopted some of Ts’o’s patches a few days later. These included one patch through which the kernel loads the Ext3 file system with ‘data=writeback’ unless the user explicitly states otherwise during kernel configuration or mounting. This should improve performance, but increases the risk of data loss in the event of a crash or if the computer is turned off without shutting down. There is also a risk that data from previously deleted files belonging to other users could find its way into new files incompletely written to disk before a crash.

The ‘data=guarded’ mode developed by chief Btrfs developer Chris Mason should resolve some of these problems. Two of the enhancements coded as part of this development have already been incorporated into the main development tree. The rest have been put on hold, with the development cycle already entering the stabilisation phase.

Data security

In the tumult of the discussion, the risk of data loss in Ext4 as a result of delayed allocation once more reared its ugly head. This risk should be significantly reduced by a number of patches for the Ext4 code which have now, as planned, made their way into the main development tree. The changes do, however, have a negative effect on performance in certain situations.

The discussion on the risk of data loss led to a debate on precisely what guarantees a file system should be offering anyway. This led to the question of whether and how kernel and file systems should ensure that data does not just end up in a disk’s write cache, but actually gets written in the correct sequence. This and other performance tuning questions led to a further discussion on where the role of the kernel developers in configuration stops and where fine tuning issues are better left to the Linux distributors.

Two new file systems

Following the adoption of Btrfs and SquashFS in Linux 2.6.29, the kernel development team have once more integrated two new file systems into 2.6.30 in the form of NILFS and EXOFS.

NILFS2 (New Implementation of a Log-structured Filesystem Version 2) is a log-structured file system (LFS) with continuous snapshotting optimised for the needs of solid state discs (SSD). A detailed description of how it works can be found on the NILFS2 website and in the kernel documentation on NILFS2. Further details can be found in a presentationPDF given as part of the Linux Storage & File system Workshop 2008 (LSF’08) in February, which includes a comparison between NILFS2 and Btrfs, Ext2 through 4, ReiserFS and XFS when running with an SSD. The presentation by Dongjun Shin, which is already somewhat long in the tooth, also takes a close look at some of the particularities of file systems for SSDs.

EXOFS stands for Extended Object File System and used to be known as OSDFS (Object-Based Storage Devices File System). As the old name suggest, it is intended for the somewhat exotic OSDs (object-based storage devices), which will be supported by the SCSI subsystem for the first time in 2.6.30. Users wanting further information on this kind of storage and the file system can find details in an article on OSDs by Sun, the kernel documentation on EXOFS, the EXOFS developer website and an LWN.net article on EXOFS/OSDFS.

Cache for the network, infusion for Btrfs

After several years of development, the kernel development team have now adopted the FS-Cache patch developed primarily by Red Hat developer David Howells (kernel documentation). This extension allows a file system cache to be set up to reduce network traffic when using network file systems such as AFS and NFS. This is, for instance, of interest for thin clients with no hard drive or flash media which obtain their root file system and all other data over a network.

The Btrfs development team have also been busy and have enhanced the file system code to cope better with 4k stacks – further improvements along these lines remain on the to-do list. There are also enhancements to improve write performance in general and for SSDs.

ReiserFS - forgotten but not gone

The kernel’s ReiserFS code is still officially supported, but has long been without an official maintainer. Consequently, in recent months there have been only minor changes to ensure that the once popular file system keeps working.

Novell developer Jeff Mahoney has now added various patches developed as part of SLED/SLES, some of which are already more than two years old. They should resolve irregularities or bugs in ReiserFS, (also referred to as Reiser3). According to Mahoney’s Git pull request, after incorporation of these patches ReiserFS should be considered to be in “deep maintenance-only mode”. As part of the discussions on Git pull requests, Frederic Weisbecker indicated that he is working on changes to reduce the use of the Big Kernel Lock (BKL) in ReiserFS.

Minor gems

The kernel development team have extended DFS support in CIFS to support access to remote servers.

The changes described are just some of the more significant changes recently undertaken by kernel hackers on the code for the various file systems. Numerous further major changes can be found from the list of commit headers from the main development tree below. The links take you directly to the changes in the main development tree web interface, where the commit comments and the patches themselves provide further information on these, perhaps less major, but in no way insignificant changes.

Beltzner said that Mozilla has completed all “remaining beta issues” in Firefox 3.5 and while there is always a chance that the actual beta testing in the current beta 4 will unveil additional challenges, the next pre-release of Firefox 3.5 will be a release candidate (RC). Mozilla is aiming for a single release candidate, but Beltzner said that every single Firefox release so far always had three release candidates and it is unclear how many RCs version 3.5 will see.

“This release is tougher to nail down,” Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox at Mozilla, told TG Daily, pointing to significance of the update. Originally planned as a small 3.1 release, Mozilla recently decided to rename the browser to version 3.5 due to the browser’s substantial changes. The most important upgrade is the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which increases Firefox’ Javascript performance by a factor of 3, Beltzner said. For the remaining pre-releases, Mozilla focuses on Firefox 3.5 web compatibility to make sure the browser “does not break websites.”

If everything goes according to plan, Firefox 3.5 will be released in late Q2.

Other than it is the case with the beta versions of Safari and Internet Explorer, Mozilla treats Firefox beta software as pure developer software. Apple and Microsoft have used their beta browser more and more as marketing tools, but Mozilla does not plan to hop on the same train – and it may not have a beneficial effect for the organization anyway, Beltzner noted.

While Mozilla releases nightly builds of the browser on a continuous basis, each new beta may not be as interesting to users as those rare betas for Safari and IE. “It is a fundamental difference in the way how our culture works,” Beltzner said. Mozilla believes that its beta software is a crucial tool for developers, while other browser makers are using their beta browsers for marketing purposes. “Internet Explorer has such a long upgrade cycle. And when a beta is released people end up installing that software since they believe it is the latest and greatest.”

Mozilla estimates that 900,000 users are currently using a beta version of Firefox 3.1/3.5. Mozilla hopes that Firefox 3.5 will appeal to developers as the software that will drive the web as an application platform. It is interesting to note that Mozilla is treating the 3.5 release as a major release, which has the same significance as the previous 3.0 release. Beltzner said that Mozilla has accelerated its development effort: While the organization usually took two years to get a new browser to users, the next release was developed in just one year.

But how does Twitter’s retention rate compare to Facebook (Facebook reviews) and MySpace (MySpace reviews) in the early days? Not well, says Nielsen:

Compare it to the two heavily-touted behemoths of social networking when they were just starting out…we found that even when Facebook and MySpace were emerging networks like Twitter is now, their retention rates were twice as high. When they went through their explosive growth phases, that retention only went up, and both sit at nearly 70 percent today.

The question is, how can Twitter make sure that users stick around for the long haul? What is it about Facebook and MySpace that make them so appealing? Could it be, possibly, that finding friends on Twitter remains harder than doing so on other social networks?

UPDATE: As discussed in the comments, Nielsen is only able to measure return visits to Twitter.com: how many people set up a desktop application like TweetDeck (TweetDeck reviews) and continue to Tweet, but never return to Twitter.com?

Earlier this month, four Pirate Bay visionaries were given harsh fines and jail sentences. Their only crime: creating the largest, free, uncensored, versatile file sharing platform on the Internet. Soon after, Taiwan passed 3-strikes legislation for copyright violations. The recording industry is no longer targeting pirates - they are actually trying to hijack the very fabric of the Internet.

The apparent strategy:

1. Outlaw file sharing
2. Outlaw personal encryption and anonymization services

3. Set up a global, privately-run Internet surveillance program to spy on everybody all the time without a warrant — run by ISPs and paid for by the taxpayers
4. And finally, get the authority to block anyone from the Internet entirely, without the involvement of police, courts or any verifiable trail of evidence

We can not let this happen.

“It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.” - Bruce Schneier

One of the main reasons why the recording industry are currently succeeding in this hostile takeover of the Internet, is that most people simply don’t understand what file sharing is, or why it matters to them in the first place. Whenever civil liberties are sacrificed, it is always on the bonfire of ignorance. We need to educate the world - neighbors, parents, judges and lawmakers - as to why the Internet must remain free, neutral, and uncensored.

It sometimes helps to explain that a file sharing technology like Bittorrent is the digital society’s equivalent of the wheel. It allows fast and easy transportation of data between users and businesses alike. But like the wheel, file sharing needs a stable, flat surface to perform at its best. In this analogy, The Pirate Bay is nothing short of the largest, best maintained, and most stable network of such ‘digital roads’ in the world. And it’s free to use for anyone, at any time, for any purpose.

Naturally, as is always the case where people congregate in a free society, some of the people who drive their wheeled carts on this network of roads will be carrying things in their carts of questionable quality, purpose or origin. In any system or society that is based on freedom rather than censorship or distrust, there is no question that individual transgressions can take place. This is the most basic cost of liberty.

As a digital society in its teens, we have yet to realize the enormous potential of file sharing in culture, education, knowledge sharing, and business. But already, we are seeing massive opposition against it from the likes of IFPI, the RIAA and the MPAA. This opposition, of course, stems from some of the aforementioned wheeled carts transporting ‘questionable goods’, in the form of copyrighted material.

The ensuing battle has been disguised as a legal matter concerning rights holders and ‘pirates’, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. It is true that the recording industry wants to stop criminals, but they are attempting to prohibit the wheel and all building of roads to pull it off. These lawyers are prepared to sacrifice our liberties, our privacy and our digital freedom in order to reach their goal. It is a grossly disproportionate and misdirected attack, and it has already begun: Once the verdict of the Spectrial was in, the Swedish anti-piracy office immediately began issuing legal threats against other file sharing networks. They are bulldozing every street and burning every car to prevent any possible (mis)use of the wheel. And worse yet - we are letting it happen.

The case of The Pirate Bay was not a case of artists vs. freeloaders, or even the recording industry vs. pirates. There were no artists on the accusing side, nor were there any pirates on the defending side. It was, and is, a case of misguided frustration by industry executives and lawyers, directed not against the actual violators of copyright law, but against the most outspoken proponents and enablers of a fundmental digital technology. A technology that allows fast and easy transportation af data - all data - between users and businesses alike.

We must never blame the network for the actions of individuals. Both rights holders and lawmakers must respect the fundamental principle of personal, individual responsibility. Let each peer be responsible for his own actions, just as every driver is liable for his own car.

The Pirate Bay is not illegal. File sharing is not illegal. Using file sharing for illegal purposes is illegal. The difference may be subtle to a layman, but in legal terms, the distinction is clear as day. The fact that the judges in the Pirate Bay case failed to recognize this, is a judicial travesty bordering on flat out corruption.

It cannot be stressed enough: this is not a question of copyright, of music, or of piracy. This is a question of a private organization now aiming to subvert several of the most important digital inventions since the World Wide Web, and our judges and politicians turning a blind eye in a staggering display of ignorance and corruption. This fight is about much more than The Pirate Bay. When our liberties are taken from us, we must rise, united in one voice, and fight for them.

It is a fight for basic digital liberties. It is a fight for our right to privacy. It is a fight for net neutrality. There is no getting around it. This is the fight of our generation, and it is too important to lose.

This is a guest post by Jens Roland. Jens is a computer scientist by training, but a technology forecaster by trade. He has worked at international think tanks as a consultant and researcher in emerging technologies and has written more than 300 articles and a book on the subject.

As I have said before: The Kindle in kindling.

It is always nice when the industry rumor mill starts validating what I have been saying, namely, that rumors of a ready-to-release Apple netbook actually refer to a supersized iPod touch.

Described as having a larger touch-screen than the Kindle’s 6-inch display, while being physically smaller than the Amazon device, Apple’s baby has been dubbed a “mediapad.”

The larger screen would be a more pleasant way to view movies or the Internet than an iPod or iPhone and the device could have decent speakers, too. By using a touch screen, Apple could save space necessary for Kindle’s keyboard, resulting in a smaller device.

While not pocket-sized, the Apple mediapad would be easy to carry and offer an entertainment experience a smaller device could not match. Reading a book might be such an experience, right?

Now, I have the Kindle for iPhone app as a curiosity but have no real interest in using it to read a book. The screen is just too tiny.
I do not own a Kindle and have no interest in paying over $350 for what, to me, would be a single-purpose device. An Apple mediapad would doubtless do everything an iPod touch does, only larger. And it could do everything a Kindle does, too, only in color.

Will this bother Amazon? Not in the least. I cannot imagine that Amazon really wants to be a consumer electronics hardware company. Its investment in Kindle was necessary to kick-start the e-book industry. Many companies had tried e-books previously, without much luck.

Amazon has shown that an e-book reader can find customers, provided the content is available. Amazon has the content part nailed and will, presumably, be happy to see Apple create a much larger installed based of e-book-capable hardware than Kindle ever will.

My prediction is that if Apple really does the mediapad, Kindle will go away. But, probably not until Apple can reach a $350 price for its rumored new product. That make take a while, as something makes me think the super iPod touch will cost $500 or more when/if it is released.

In which case, the Apple mediapad and Kindle will coexist for a time, but eventually there will be no need for the Kindle and Amazon will be happy to be out of the hardware business.

This is, of course, based on my interpretation of a rumor about what Apple is planning. I think the rumor makes sense, but if it is wrong, well, never mind.

The Silicon Valley trend-setter has been hiring people from many different segments of the semiconductor industry, including engineers to create multifunction chips that are used in cellphones to run software and carry out other chores.
Apple could use the internally developed chips to sharply reduce the power consumption of its hit iPhone and iPod touch devices, and possibly add graphics circuitry to help its hardware play realistic game software and high-definition videos, people familiar with its plans say.

In one sign of the new focus, Apple recently hired Raja Koduri, who was formerly the chief technology officer of the graphics products group at chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Mr. Koduri started at Apple this week, following in the footsteps of Bob Drebin, who had held the same title at AMD and is also now working for Apple. Online job postings from Apple describe dozens of chip-related positions it is trying to fill, some with partial descriptions like “testing the functional correctness of Apple developed silicon.”

Besides a desire to beat rivals to market with new features, Apple’s shift is also an effort to share fewer details about its technology plans with external chip suppliers, say people familiar with the moves.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

The new effort faces plenty of hurdles, and people familiar with Apple’s plans don’t expect internally designed chips to emerge until next year at the earliest. Still, Apple’s aggressive hiring is another sign of how the company’s recent success has allowed it to expand while other tech giants have trimmed their work forces in the recession.

Apple’s strategy also marks a break from a long-term trend among most big electronics companies to outsource the development of chips and other components to external suppliers.
Last spring, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs explained the purchase of Silicon Valley start-up P.A. Semi as a way to acquire expertise and technology to help run increasingly sophisticated software on iPhones and iPods. “You can’t just go out and buy the chips off the shelf to do that,” said Mr. Jobs in an interview.

Most cellphones are based on chip designs licensed by ARM Holdings PLC to others. For the iPhone, Samsung Electronics Co. supplies an ARM-based microprocessor with custom features developed by Apple, analysts say.

People familiar with Apple’s thinking say executives have expressed concern that some information shared with outside vendors could find its way into chips sold to Apple competitors. A Samsung spokeswoman declined comment.

People familiar with the situation say Mr. Jobs told P.A. Semi engineers last April that he wanted to develop chips internally and didn’t want knowledge about the technology to leave Apple. Mr. Jobs is on medical leave and was unavailable for comment.

People familiar with Apple’s plans expect former P.A. Semi engineers to help create ARM-based chips that could improve the performance and battery life of future iPhones.

Apple’s hiring spree in semiconductors started well before the acquisition and has continued through the past few months, according to postings on the networking site LinkedIn. The site contains more than 100 people listing current Apple job titles and past expertise in chips, including veterans of Intel Corp., Samsung and Qualcomm Inc.

Apple’s own job postings, some aggregated by the site Indeed.com, provide clues about possible features to come. Two recent postings involve handwriting recognition technology; several others seek expertise in chips for managing displays.

Apple participated in a job fair earlier this month for soon-to-be-unemployed engineers at memory chip company Spansion Inc., which sought bankruptcy protection in March, people familiar with the situation said.
—Nick Wingfield and Justin Scheck contributed to this article.

Today the White House launched an official collection of photos depicting Obama’s first 100 days in office on Flickr. The Creative Commons Foundation asks why these photos are licensed as Creative Commons Attribution (meaning you have to credit the source) instead of being in the Public Domain free for use in any context, as data created by the Federal Government usually is.

The answer to the question? The photos aren’t Public Domain because Flickr doesn’t offer Public Domain licensing as an option. That’s a shame for every photo publisher, not just he White House. Creative Commons licensing makes it really easy for people who want to re-use photos to do so quickly and easily by allowing content creators to communicate their conditions for re-use ahead of time. If you just want to get your photos out into the world with absolutely no restrictions, though, Flickr doesn’t offer that option. Or, if you’re a government agency that wants to publish photos on the best photo sharing site on the web and make them Public Domain like you ought to - you’re out of luck.

We’re going to guess that the White House will be added to the list of selected partners participating in the Flickr Commons, where organizations like the Library of Congress have photos posted under a special “no known copyright” license. That won’t solve the problem for the rest of us, though, and it’s probably not a scalable solution for every government agency that would like to publish to Flickr.

Hopefully Flickr will be prompted to change its licensing options; other users have asked for Public Domain as an option for some time. We’ve asked the company for comment and will update this post if we get a helpful reply. Flickr’s support for Creative Commons has been fabulous. The next logical step is to support publishing photos to the Public Domain.

Since posting this we’ve been pointed to an active conversation on Flickr about Public Domain, where we found a link to site co-founder Stewart Butterfield’s explanation four years ago for not offering Public Domain as an option.