Eben Moglen Scottish society for Computers and Law annual lecture for 2007.

The lecture, talk or discussion given by Eben Moglen on June 26th to the Scottish Society for Computers and Law, "The Global Software Industry in Transformation: After GPLv3" is available for reading or listening.
I think it is good for any one who is interested in Open Source to read or listen. I enjoyed reading it.
Here is the link to Eben Moglen's talk.

Tags: Eben Moglen, GPLV3

Google Desktop now runs on Linux!

After getting used to the Google Desktop on my MAC, I sometime wished that I had it for my Linux machines. I use Linux, mainly at my work and home and it seems now I can try Google Desktop out.
According to Official Google Blog post;
Official Google Blog: Google Desktop now available for Linux posted by Mendel Chuang, Product Marketing Manager, Not only can you rediscover important documents that have been idling on your hard drive for years, but you can also search through emails saved in Gmail or other applications. All office files, including documents and slides created with OpenOffice.org can be easily found. Since some Linux users are program developers, Google Desktop was designed with the ability to search source code and information contained in .pdf, .ps, .man and .info documents. It also features the Quick Search Box ,which you can call up by pressing the Ctrl key twice. Type a few letters or words into the search box and your top results pop up instantly. Keeping with a global focus, you can use it in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean --and it works with many versions of Linux too.
So if it is what you like, you can get Google Desktop for Linux at GDL site.

Tags: Google, Google Desktop, Linux, Google Desktop for Linux

64GB Flash SSD from SAMSUNG

Samsung has announced 64GB Flash SSD(Nand Flash-based Solid State Drive) to be used in notebooks and sub notebooks.
The drive it self is available in 2.5" and 1.8" sizes with 40 pin ATA interface and 50 pin interfaces respectively.
I think it is a boon to mobile users as power consumption drops dramatically with these drives. So does the noise generated by the normal hard drives. But why ATA, most notebooks nowadays come with SATA interfaces and perhaps may be even could be used as boot drive for servers. May be could give a boost to write ahead and binary logs, and for swap drives!

Here are the specifications according to Samsung site.

Unlimited Resistance against Impact : Over 1500G No mechanical parts Extended Operation Temperature Range From -25°C to 85°C The lightest Storage Solution in the world Fast Access Time and Read/Write Speed Sequential Read Sector : Up to 58MB Sustained Write Sector : Up to 32MB <1ms src="http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/FlashSSD/images/Bult_org.gif" alt="" border="0" height="3" vspace="2" width="8">Fast Access Time and Read/Write Speed Under 1msec, No Seek time Built-in EDC and ECC function to correct 2 random bits for each 512 Bytes Virtually no heat generation No accoustic noise or vibration PIO 0~4 mode. Up to ATA5 and UDMA mode 4 (Ultra DMA66)

NASA releases CLARAty Robotic Software under Open Source License

Coupled Layer Architecture for Robotic Autonomy or otherwise known as CLARAty is a collection of that spans over 100K lines of code. And this is on version 0.10. By looking at the capabilities and the scope it covers, this will certainly will grow larger by the time it reaches version 1.0!

With this release, a total of 44 CLARAty modules (~100K lines of code) are now available under the JPL Open Source License. This release is intended to share with the robotics community some of the core robotic modules which were jointly developed with NASA Ames Research Center, Carnegie Mellon, and University of Minnesota. This first release represents about 10% of all CLARAty modules and 30% of the generic modules planned for future release.

CLARAty development was primarily funded by the Mars Technology Program and it serves as the integration environment for the program's rover technology developments.

The first release of its software, version 0.10-beta, is now available publicly at http://claraty.jpl.nasa.gov. Also extensive information as how to download, compile and additional tools needed are available here.

Tags: NASA, Robotics, JPL, MARS Technology, Open source robotics, CLARAty