Logging The Cyber World

Tags: add-ons, browser, firefox, rapid release, twitter on firefox

Mozilla released Firefox 8 today, a version that weeds out some add-ons and that will shoulder more responsibility for the organization’s new fast-development process.

Giving the user control over the Web experience has been a longstanding Mozilla priority, and Firefox 8 takes a new step here. With earlier versions, third-party software could extend Firefox with new features–Skype’s tool for highlighting phone numbers for easy online calling, for example. With Firefox 8, though, third-party add-ons will be disabled by default.

“These add-ons installed by third parties present a number of problems: they can slow down Firefox start-up and page loading time, they clutter the interface with toolbars that often go unused, they lag behind on compatibility and security updates, and most importantly, they take the user out of control of their add-ons,” said Mozilla programmer Justin “Fligtar” Scott in a blog post about the feature.

More here

Tags: band, digital distribution, Music, nin, nine inch nail, Open Source

Throughout his 20+ year career as the man behind industrial-rock act Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor has been no stranger to the ways of Creative Commons and digital distribution. In fact, he’s let fans tinker with his musical creations as far back as the 1999 release of his two-disc album, “The Fragile,” two years before the sharing and remixing licensing arrangements of the non-profit organization Creative Commons even existed.

In an era when record labels fight the underground, unpaid spread of music tooth-and-nail, and companies like Apple take six years to strip the Digital Rights Management out of their massive online song stores, Reznor seems to have found a fire in non-traditional distribution arrangements. He’s used alternate reality games and secret scavenger hunts to promote new works, and released full CDs under a “pay for it if you feel like it” arrangement. In addition to PDFs of artwork and liner notes, the new albums come with full Creative Commons license arrangements that allow fans to modify, share, and remix the work at their leisure.

One would think Reznor has fallen into a Downward Spiral of economics, but the facts don’t lie: his release of the four-part instrumental album Ghosts I-IV netted the singer/songwriter/geek more than $750,000 in the first three days of its release–even given the fact that fans could legally grab the music for absolutely no cost. In turn, said album became the bestselling MP3 album of 2008 at Amazon.com. And fans have responded to the licensing arrangements in kind, launching full communities of their own for collecting, promoting, and releasing remixed Nine Inch Nails tracks. (For more information on how Reznor accomplished this feat, check out this Creative Commons blog post)

Read the full detail @ Yahoo!

Tags: fedora, hacking, Linux, Open Source, red hat, security

Linux distributor red Hat has issued a critical security update after its servers were hacked last week.

The organisation has acknowledged the attack, and one on the Fedora servers as well. It says that it is investigating to see if data was stolen or malware introduced to its systems.

“In connection with the incident, the intruder was able to get a small number of OpenSSH packages relating only to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (i386 and x86_64 architectures only) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (x86_64 architecture only) signed.

More at vnunet.com

Tags: apache, funding, Microsoft, Open Source, open source projects, promoting open source

Microsoft on Friday expanded its support for the open-source community by giving money to the Apache Software Foundation, the first time it has given money to the long-standing open-source project.

Microsoft also said it is contributing code to support a PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) project and committing to offer royalty-free specifications for Windows Server and.NET Framework protocols as part of its expanded support for the open-source community. The company announced its plans at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) now being held in Portland, Oregon.

Full Story at Yahoo News

Tags: free, java, javaone, Open Source, open technology, sun microsystems

At JavaOne in May, 2006, Sun Microsystems announced they were going to release Java as free software under the terms of the GPL. The size of the task (6.5 million lines of code) was only eclipsed by the size of the opportunity for Java as a free and open technology.

At JavaOne in May 2007, Sun announced that the work was largely completed and so OpenJDK was launched. What was less newsworthy was the fact that on release – OpenJDK still relied on code that was encumbered – between 4 and 5 percent of the code was closed, non free source that Sun didn’t own.

complete article here.

Tags: browser, download, firefox, guinness world of records, mozilla, Open Source

“Join us in our mission to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours!

Have you attempted to set a World Record with no luck? Well, now is your chance to change that! Help set a Guinness World Record by pledging to download Firefox 3 today. And, help spread the word!”

Download Here

See statistics here

Tags: browser, firefox, guinness world of record, mozilla, participation

Firefox community to set the Guinness World Record for Most Software Downloaded in 24 Hours.
Wanna participate? Make your pledge here.