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Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
A compulsory insurance against software patents is like firefighting with petrol!
The president of the Free Software Foundation Europe has sent out an open letter to the president of the EC concerning software patents and insurance. "In this sense, the planned compulsory insurance is like firefighting with petrol: We already have 30,000 software patents in Europe. Many compulsory insured patentees will consider the insurance as an investment they need a return on. Returns from software patents are reaped in lawsuits filed. The result: Rapidly exploding insurance premiums, insurance companies limiting their risk to what they can calculate, and in the end patentees and defendants will find themselves in a situation similar to one without compulsory insurance, but with one important difference: They will have spent an insane amount of money on a useless insurance and bureaucracy for its administration will have skyrocketed."
Anonymous Voting Referendum (GnomeDesktop)
Gnomedesktop.org has announced a new GNOME Foundation voting process. "The results for the anonymous voting referendum are now official: all future GNOME Foundation elections and referenda will use an anonymous voting process."
GNOME Foundation 2004 Elections (GnomeDesktop)
GNOME Foundation 2004 elections for the Board of Directors are coming up. Nominations are currently open to members of the GNOME Foundation. Find the details in this announcement.
Technocrat to pay $50 for original articles to be made Open Source
Bruce Perens' Techrocrat.net site will pay $50 per article for articles on hardware, software, and systems administration. "This is your chance to be a paid professional author, to see your work viewed widely and taken up by others, and to get paid for making Open Source. We'll do our best to get other sites to link to the article."
Commercial announcements
Saving Cash: A Comparison of Open Source and Proprietary Software
Research and Markets has announced a new report entitled Saving Cash: A Comparison of Open Source and Proprietary Software. "This report on open source in Germany shows you significant saving potentials through the deployment of open source software for different company sizes. The study shows that the risk for Open Source users on account of copyright or patent violations in the software used is minimal." You do have to pay for the report, however.
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 5.0 for Sendmail with Milter API
Kaspersky Lab has announced version 5.0 of it's Anti-Virus software. "Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Sendmail with Milter API protects Linux/ Unix server mail traffic. The program works in conjunction with Sendmail and supports Sendmail's Content Management (Milter) API. This interface provides external applications with access to mail messages processed by Sendmail. It also offers additional processing and editing of the contents and meta-data of mail messages." Of course, most of the scanned viruses don't affect Linux systems.
Mandrakesoft gets mobility grant
Mandrakesoft has announced that it will be sharing a €1 million grant for "advanced mobility research"; click below for the details.
Novell: Unbending the truth
Novell has put up a series of pages entitled Unbending the Truth: Things Microsoft Hopes You Won't Notice; it is a response to Steve Ballmer's anti-Linux letter. "If the world were as Microsoft states, Linux would not be the world's fastest growing operating system, ISVs would not be writing to it in ever increasing numbers, partners would not be looking to sell it, and Microsoft would not have put a revenue caution related to Linux in their latest SEC filing. These, however, are the real facts."
Hardware Acceleration Delivers Wire Speed Performance to Security Software
Sensory Networks, a developer of hardware acceleration technology for network security applications, and Astaro have announced a partnership to integrate Astaro Security Linux with Sensory Networks NodalCore acceleration technology to deliver a hardware-accelerated security solution.
SGI Doubles Density of High-End Altix Server
SGI has announced a new entry in its SGI Altix 3700 series, featuring twice the bandwidth and processor density of previous versions. "The new system, which will also accommodate the forthcoming tanium 2 processors with 9MB cache, enables customers to pack 64 processors into a standard Altix rack."
Japan buys 2048-node Linux cluster
SGI has announced the sale of a 2048-processor Linux cluster to Japan's Atomic Energy Research Institute. The system is based on Itanium processors, and includes over 13TB of installed memory.
Terra Soft Supplies Boeing, Airforce with Flight Simulators
Terra Soft Solutions, Inc. has delivered 17 dual-head Apple Power Mac G5s to Ellsworth and Dyess Airforce bases to serve as flight simulators for the Boeing B1 bombers. "Boeing extracted the actual Ada95 code used on-board the B1 and the FORTRAN and C code from its development simulators, ported it to Yellow Dog Linux, and then ported and applied a C Motif graphical user interface which simulates the physical switch panel and displays on-board the B1 bomber."
TippingPoint Releases Open Source Code for Tomahawk
TippingPoint Technologies, Inc. has announced the availability and open source release of Tomahawk(TM), a test tool designed to evaluate the unique capabilities of network-based intrusion prevention systems (IPS).
Wind River Targets the Telecommunications Market
Wind River Systems, Inc. has announced the Wind River Platform for Network Equipment, Linux Edition. The Platform includes a complete Linux reference file system with a rich set of networking middleware and applications. Based on the Linux 2.6 kernel with Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) 2.01 features, Platform for Network Equipment, Linux Edition also includes Wind River Workbench 2.2.
New Books
'C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3' Book Download (KDE.News)
KDE.News announces the availability of a freely downloadable book. "The "C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3" book written by Trolltech software engineer Jasmin Blanchette and Trolltech's documentation manager Mark Summerfield, already featured by the dot, can now be downloaded in PDF format from the publisher's homepage in the "Downloads" section."
"Spam Kings" Released by O'Reilly
O'Reilly has published the book Spam Kings by Brian McWilliams. "Brian McWilliams, author of "Spam Kings: The Real Story Behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and @*#?% Enlargements" explores the shadowy world of the people responsible for today's junk email epidemic."
"Real World Web Services" Released by O'Reilly
O'Reilly has published the book Real World Web Services by Will Iverson.
Resources
Open Streaming Manuals announced
The initial release of a manual on Linux streaming has been announced. "r a d i o q u a l i a have just finished the first version of a streaming manual for those wishing to learn how to stream under Linux. Its intended as a manual to accompany a hands-on self-learning or workshop based approach. No previous knowledge of Linux is assumed. Another manual on 'advanced topics' will be forthcoming."
Quicktoots release number 13
Release 13 of Quicktoots is available. The topic this time is audio mastering. "Mastering is the art of making a good mix sound incredible. It takes years of experience do do it well and is possibly the most important part of a professionals recording cycle. This toot provides invaluable insight into sound control during the mastering phase. Ron puts together years of hard learned knowledge gained from running his Minneapolis studio."
New Additions on LinuxSound.org
Dave Philips has updated his list of new Linux audio software for October/November, 2004.
The LDP Weekly News
The November 3, 2004 edition of the Linux Documentation Project Weekly News is available with a new round of Linux documentation. "Matt Barnes would like to start a Linux Documentation - Audio Video project. The project aims to convert The LDP documents to wave and mp3 format. The goal of this exercise is to show that it can be done, and that it should be done. The intent is to allow someone to download a media file into a media player and listen to the information rather than always having to read it and possibly stream them over the internet." Hmm, talking man pages?
Contests and Awards
KDE and the Linux Journal 2004 Readers' Choice Awards (KDE.News)
KDE.News takes a look at KDE and various applications that have been honored in the Linux Journal 2004 Readers' Choice Awards. "Most importantly, in the category of "Favorite Desktop Environment", KDE came in first followed by GNOME. The trend over recent years has shown KDE gaining more and more popularity over GNOME and this year KDE received two votes for every one that GNOME received."
Kontact/KMail Awarded Best Mail Client (KDE.News)
KDE.News covers KDE's award for Kontact/KMail as "Best Mail Client" at Linux World Expo & Conference Europe (Frankfurt).
Upcoming Events
Earlybird entries are about to close for OSDC
Registration for the Australian Open Source Developers' Conference is now open. This conference will be run on the 1st - 3rd of December 2004 at Monash University, Caulfield in Melbourne, Australia.
Randal L. Schwartz and the 'Intermediate Perl' Seminar
Hurricane Electric has announced the hosting of a seminar on Perl by Randal L. Schwartz. "Intermediate Perl," will be held on Saturday, November 20, 2004, in Fremont, CA, between 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Lunch will be provided by Hurricane Electric. The cost of the seminar is $199."
Call for Participation: ICMC 2005
A call for participation has gone out for the International Computer Music Conference 2005 (ICMC). The event will be held on September 5-9, 2005 in Barcelona, Spain.
Southern California Linux Expo Continues to fill out Expo Lineup (LinuxMedNews)
LinuxMedNews reports on the latest speaker additions to SCALE, the Southern California Linux Expo. The event will take place on February 12 and 13, 2005, in Los Angeles, CA.
Events: November 4 - December 30, 2004
| Date | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| November 4 - 5, 2004 | HiverCon 2004 | (The Davenport Hotel)Dublin, Ireland |
| November 4 - 6, 2004 | International Computer Music Conference(ICMC) | Miami, FL |
| November 5 - 6, 2004 | Nottingham LUG - Linux at Green's Mill Science Centre | Nottingham, UK |
| November 6 - 12, 2004 | High Performance Computing, Networking, and Storage Conf(SCnn) | Pittsburgh, PA |
| November 7 - 10, 2004 | International PHP Conference 2004 | Frankfurt, Germany |
| November 8 - 10, 2004 | MySQL ComCon Europe | (NH Hotel Frankfurt-Mörfelden)Frankfurt, Germany |
| November 13 - 17, 2004 | ApacheCon US 2004 | (Alexis Park Resort)Las Vegas, NV |
| November 14 - 18, 2004 | COMDEX Conference and Exposition | (Las Vegas Convention Center)Las Vegas, Nevada |
| November 14 - 19, 2004 | Large Installation System Administration Conference(LISA '04) | (Atlanta Marriott Marquis)Atlanta, GA |
| November 18 - 19, 2004 | Forum PHP, Paris | Paris, France |
| November 25 - 26, 2004 | Le forum PHP 2004 | (FIAP Jean Monnet)Paris, France |
| November 29 - 30, 2004 | LinuxPro 2004 | (Hotel Gromada Airport Conference Center)Warsaw, Poland |
| December 1 - 3, 2004 | Australian Open Source Developers' Conference | (Monash University)Melbourne, Australia |
| December 1 - 3, 2004 | Linux Bangalore 2004 | (Indian Institute of Science)Bangalore, India |
| December 4, 2004 | Lightweight Languages 2004(LL4) | (MIT Stata Center)Boston, MA |
| December 5 - 18, 2004 | Ubuntu Conference | Mataró, Spain |
| December 27 - 29, 2004 | Chaos Communication Congress(21C3) | (Berliner Congress Center)Berlin, Germany |
Software announcements
This week's software announcements
Here are the software announcements, courtesy of Freshmeat.net. They are available in two formats:
- Sorted alphabetically,
- Sorted by license.
Page editor: Forrest Cook