"Canonical Announces Availability of Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition," April 20, 2009.

[As this announcement says, Open Office 3.0 ships with Ubuntu 9.04. That is a new version of the Office suite, too. I have been using Open Office for nearly a year now and like it better than Word, Excel, etc. Coming Soon to the desktop closest to me: Goodbye Microsoft®. -jlt]

Faster boot speed, enhanced application suite and more visual appeal -- give users more reasons than ever to choose Ubuntu

LONDON, April 20, 2009 – Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, announced today that Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition is free to download from Thursday 23 April. Also announced were the simultaneous releases of Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition and Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (UNR)

Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition delivers a range of feature enhancements to improve the user experience. Shorter boot speeds, some as short as 25 seconds, ensure faster access to a full computing environment on most desktop, laptop and netbook models. Enhanced suspend-and-resume features also give users more time between charges along with immediate access after hibernation. Intelligent switching between Wi-Fi and 3G environments has been broadened to support more wireless devices and 3G cards, resulting in a smoother experience for most users.

For the first time, users can download the complete Ubuntu Netbook Remix to a USB flash drive directly from Ubuntu.com.

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See also releases about the Server Edition and the Netbook Remix, which brings us a step closer to the long-awaited $100 laptop.Recommend this Post

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Henry C K Liu, "Breaking free from dollar hegemony," Asia Times online, July 30, 2008.

[Not many financial analysts have held up to the current storm of failure as well as Henry C K Liu. For one thing, he never seems to lose track of the notion that low wages keep a lid on demand. He's been writing about dollar hegemony for years. This article, excerpted briefly below, is as insightful today as it was in July. -jlt]

[...]

Dollar hegemony enables the US to own indirectly but essentially the entire global economy by requiring its wealth to be denominated in fiat dollars that the US can print at will with little in the way of monetary penalties.

Under dollar hegemony, exporting nations compete in the global market to capture needed dollars to service dollar-denominated foreign capital and debt, to pay for imported energy, raw material and capital goods, to pay intellectual property fees and information technology fees.

World trade is now a game in which the US produces fiat dollars of uncertain exchange value and zero intrinsic value, and the rest of the world produces goods and services that fiat dollars can buy at "market prices" quoted in dollars. Such market prices are no longer based on mark-ups over production costs set by socio-economic conditions in the producing countries. They are kept artificially low to compensate for the effect of overcapacity in the global economy created by a combination of overinvestment and weak demand due to low wages in every economy.

Such low market prices in turn push further down already low wages to further cut cost in an unending race to the bottom. The higher the production volume above market demand, the lower the unit market price of a product must go in order to increase sales volume to keep revenue from falling. Lower market prices require lower production costs which in turn push wages lower. Lower wages in turn further reduce demand.

To prevent loss of revenue from falling prices, producers must produce at still higher volume, thus further lowering market prices and wages in a downward spiral. Export economies are forced to compete for market share in the global market by lowering both domestic wages and the exchange rate of their currencies. Lower exchange rates push up the market price of commodities which must be compensated for by even lower wages. The adverse effects of dollar hegemony on wages apply not only to the emerging export economies but also to the importing US economy. Workers all over the world are oppressed victims of dollar hegemony, which turns the labor theory of value up-side-down.

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Links to other parts (5 parts so far) of this continuing series are here =>
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Ralph Nader, "The derivatives game," CounterPunch, October 10/12, 2008.

...a remarkably modest proposal for derivatives to be brought under regulatory control.

The derivatives markets of today have become a high stakes casino of unimaginable magnitude. Wall Street's bets have gone bad, and now the whole financial system is in peril. In a best-case scenario, it appears, the taxpayers will be required to rescue the system from itself. This is why Warren Buffett labeled derivatives "weapons of financial mass destruction."

Amazingly, there seems to be some lingering sense that current-day derivatives properly perform an insurance function.

Case in point: Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chairman. Greenspan says the world is facing “the type of wrenching financial crisis that comes along only once in a century,” but, reports the New York Times, "his faith in derivatives remains unshaken." Greenspan believes that the problem is not with derivatives, but that the people using them got greedy, according to the Times.

This is quite a view. Is it a surprise to Alan Greenspan that the people on Wall Street -- said to be ruled only by the opposing instincts of greed and fear -- "got greedy?"

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Marilyn James and Taress Alexis, Is government setting Indians up for a fight?," Sinixt Radio, March 17, 2008.

Podcast Review

I found this edition of Sinixt Radio difficult to summarize. Marilyn James, the appointed spokesperson of the Sinixt people, reads several articles:

• Coast Salish leaders commit to environmental action, Indian Country Today, March 10, 2008.
  
  
• Tribe remembers nation's largest massacre, ICT March 10 2008.
  
  
• Boise Inc. to suspend purchasing from Grassy Narrows, ICT, March 10, 2008.
  
  
• Bald eagles once again protected in Arizona, ICT, March 14, 2008.
  
  
• Northgate totem finds a new home in Suquamish, ICT, March 3, 2008.
  
  
• Gail Toensing, Michigan tribes casino efforts draw fire, ICT, March 14, 2008.
  
  
• Ford JS, Myers RA (2008) A Global Assessment of Salmon Aquaculture Impacts on Wild Salmonids . PLoS Biol 6(2): e33 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060033.
  
  

The articles are interesting in their own right, but for me the most meaningful part of the Sinixt broadcasts come when Marilyn and Taress are provoked to discuss their own views about the issues.

The idea that stuck in my mind this time came from the article about the Coast Salish gathering at the Tulalip Tribes Feb 27 - 29. Descendants of settlers have still not understood their own need to integrate into the larger history of the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. But climate change solutions may well require tribal knowledge. As North Americans come to understand their need for a history, we will likely come to show more respect for our aboriginal hosts. But that could be a long way off.

''Non-tribal environmental data only goes back to the 1930s,'' said Terry Williams of the Tulalip Tribes. ''Ours goes back thousands of years. Without our traditional knowledge, nobody truly has the ability to compare the status of fish and wildlife habitat today with its condition before the white man came.''

Williams said such traditional knowledge is just one example of the values tribes bring to natural resource management. The representatives at the gathering concurred that tribes must receive more equitable management funding to deal with climate change conditions. ''These are tribal resources being destroyed,'' Williams said. ''We have got to have the ability to build the capacity and staffing necessary to help clean up the mess, even though the tribes didn't create it.''

About the Shoshone tribal development program, Marilyn asks, What kind of weapons are they producing? and what is the environmental hazard or damage to the people in making them?

the article on Grassy Narrows documents what lobbying efforts by the people can accomplish. Boise Inc. has notified logging company AbitibiBowater that it will cease purchasing wood fiber logged from Grassy Narrows' traditional territory in the Whiskey Jack Forest without the indigenous community's consent.

Marilyn and Taress both had ideas about the Gail Toensing article on the casino in Michigan. Marilyn thinks the government is setting Indians up for a fight.

I found the one about salmon most interesting, first because of the findings. Marilyn reminds us that the salmon are having a hard time and that the oldest species of salmon spawn in the spring.

The Ford and Myers study used existing data on salmon populations to compare survival of salmon and trout that swim past salmon farms early in their life cycle with the survival of nearby populations that are not exposed to salmon farms. They found "a significant decline in survival of populations that are exposed to salmon farms."

The article was of additional interest to me because the

Public Library of Science Biology

is a peer-reviewed publication that makes high quality scientific information available on an Open Access basis.

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