TimburyDotOrg

Mirano Cafiero and Saskia and Malakai Wade really do believe that in the future women will play a more prominent role in the world of high tech and computing. No, the record to date hasn’t been good. But you can afford to be optimistic when you’re 8, as Saskia is, or 12, as Mirano and Malakai are. Still, the girls aren’t leaving anything to chance. Which is how they found themselves last week standing before a crowd of people giving a presentation during the Women in Open Source segment at the Southern California Linux Expo, one of the biggest open-source software conventions on the West Coast. They were there to be seen and heard, never mind the old admonition concerning children.

Adobe’s upcoming Flash Player 10.1 may bypass devices running Android versions prior to 2.0. The software will also require that phones have ARM Cortex-A8 processors, according to recent posts by Antonio Flores, identified as a Flash product manager on Adobe online forums. According to Adobe Systems, Flash Player 10.1 is a browser-based runtime that leverages the power of GPUs (graphics processing units), where present, providing “accelerated video and graphics while conserving battery life and minimizing resource utilization.” New mobile-ready features are said to include support for multi-touch, mobile input models, accelerometers, and multiple screen orientations.

As part of a public consultation exercise, US industry association the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), whose members include lobbying organisations such as the Business Software Alliance, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), has submitted recommendations to the US trade representative for revising the US’ blacklist of copyright sinners. The 498 page submission lists a number of countries in which, in the opinion of the IIPA, intellectual property rights are poorly enforceable or inadequately protected. The submission expressly calls for a number of countries to be placed under special observation – in part in response to their support for open source software.

Lifehacker readers, you’re in luck today; if you’ve ever wondered what a real life Macgvyer does for a living, I’m about to show you. I work with Limor at my “other” job designing educational electronics. It’s a dream come true. Ladyada is perhaps the smartest person I’ve met on the planet. I’ve always called her “Lex Luthor smart” or “MacGyver clever”, and most people seem to understand those analogies. She uses her smarts for mostly “good” and of course some mischief, which I would say is also good on a long enough timeline. That said, her work speaks for itself, so let’s take a look and listen…

While visiting Craigslist today before signing in I noticed that I the picture they used to display cautionary directions about scam addresses is most likely an Ubuntu screenshot of Firefox.

In my previous article I already touched on the subject of the virtual file-system mounted on /proc As this is an important topic on the LPI exam (and it’s also a very interesting subject), we are going to explore the /proc file-system today.

The GNOME community’s design and usability experts gathered for a week-long hackfest hosted by Canonical in the UK to shape the next major iteration of the GNOME desktop environment. GNOME 3, which is tentatively scheduled for release in September, will introduce new user interface paradigms and include an upgraded desktop shell environment.

The ambitious volunteer-based OpenStreetMap has now mapped more than 120,000 km of South African roads. It’s ambitious and time-consuming work to produce free maps of the whole of South Africa, but that is exactly what the OpenStreetMap (OSM) team is doing. Relying on a team of volunteers willing to hit the highways, streets and tracks of the country with their GPSes in their spare time, the OpenStreetMap SA team has now mapped more than 120,000 km of the country’s roads. The resulting maps are licenced under a Creative Commons licence so that anyone can use the information.

Linux is the operating system of choice for devices with ARM processors. Unfortunately problems with graphics appear in most cases. Ubuntu wants to fix this with a new GUI.

In yet another attack on open source software usage around the world, a copyright-focused organization is claiming that use of open source software promotes piracy. With a new 498-page report (PDF) that repeatedly defies logic, the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) argues that the office of the U.S. Trade Representative should “carefully monitor” government mandates to adopt open source, and place numerous countries on watchlists.