Linux in the news

Recommended Reading

MIT tries free Web education (News.com)

News.com covers MIT's release of courseware on the internet. "MIT embraced a comparison to the open-source model, in which the source code for both grass-roots and corporate software titles is published, developed and licensed free of charge. "We are fighting the commercialization of knowledge, much in the same way that open-source people are fighting the commercialization of software," Potts said."

Comments (2 posted)

DMCA critics get chance to object (Register)

The Register reports that the US Copyright Office has opened the door to exceptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by inviting comments on the controversial law. "The Copyright Office is looking for examples of where these measures have caused verifiable problems. It's not looking for critiques of the Act itself, which will likely go straight in the bin."

Comments (none posted)

Trade Shows and Conferences

Linux Expo: One size doesn't fit all (ZDNet)

ZDNet goes to Linux Expo UK in London. "Business clearly had a bigger presence at the expo than last year, with the relatively small venue dominated by large stands set up by IBM, HP SCO and others. Non-profits and independent organizations such as KDE and the Gnome Foundation, which create Linux desktop software, were also there, but concentrated towards the edges of the show."

Comments (none posted)

Companies

LinuxIT using Lindows, Ximian in custom desktops (Register)

The Register reports on the release of the "Professional Open Desktop" series from the UK's LinuxIT. The Linux distribution comes with Lindows and is aimed at "organizations with non-technical staff."

Comments (2 posted)

Ballmer: Windows prices are firm (ZDNet)

ZDNet covers Microsoft's response to the $199 Lindows PC that WallMart is selling. ""Somebody is subsidizing that hardware. Somebody's losing--people know what power supplies and processors cost," Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said at a Gartner technology conference here. The $199 price tag is less than half the price of Windows-based PCs from low-priced vendors like Dell Computer or Gateway, which sell PCs for as little as $500 or $600. It's also below the $399 entry-level price at eMachines."

Comments (5 posted)

Slashdot Star Leaves the Fold (Wired)

Here's a Wired article about Chris DiBona, who is leaving /. to start a game company. "The company's first game, Rekonstruction, is slated for release in time for Christmas 2004. Using high-resolution satellite and geographic data, Rekonstruction will let players work together and against one another to rebuild a parallel Earth that has been devastated by an asteroid strike."

Comments (1 posted)

UnitedLinux developing a desktop (ZDNet)

ZDNet reports on the development of desktop software by UnitedLinux, as well as the possible inclusion of several more distributions in the group effort. "UnitedLinux, the joint software development effort by four Linux distributors, is working on a version of its software for desktop computers, according to executive Gregory Blepp. Attending last week's Linux Expo UK in London, Blepp also said that the group was considering bringing in new members once version 1.0 of its main server software is out the door."

Comments (none posted)

Business

Microsoft Licensing Terms Drive Some Smaller Firms To Linux (TechWeb)

TechWeb covers some smaller companies that are switching to Linux because of Microsoft's licensing terms. "The company began investigating Linux when big companies such as IBM began to support it, but Microsoft's licensing terms accelerated its migration, said ISS systems administrator Curtis Turner."

Comments (none posted)

Linux gaining acceptance in Canberra (Computerworld)

Computerworld reports on the spread of Linux into Australian government. "Peter Gigliotti is the assistant director of computing at the Bureau of Meteorology. He has had no problems using Linux for about two months on a development cluster for one of the government's largest Web servers. Gigliotti is typical of government IT managers turning to Linux. "Everybody's looking at the bottom line these days. I'd estimate we've made a cost saving of about 30 per cent, that's hardware and software," he said." Thanks to Vladimir Likic.

Comments (none posted)

Have it your way -- with Linux, of course (LinuxDevices)

LinuxDevices.com covers a Sicom Systems Inc. announcement that they are in the process of installing 160 Linux-based SL-18 point-of-sale (POS) systems in all of the Burger King restaurants in Puerto Rico. "The systems are controlled by a customized Linux operating system implementation put together by Sicom. Each system contains a Sicom-developed custom computer board which is based on a National Semiconductor Geode system-on-chip processor."

Comments (none posted)

Travel Service Explores Open-Road Possibilities (TechWeb)

TechWeb takes a journey with the Linux-based Exxon Mobil Travel Guide. "The travel service already is migrating newly developed travel and database applications for its new Mobil Companion to IBM, which will host and maintain them on a mainframe running SuSE Linux."

Comments (none posted)

Big European Manufacturer Expands Linux Commitment (TechWeb)

Another business choses Linux, according to this story on InternetWeek. "Villeroy & Boch, a manufacturer of ceramic products, said Wednesday it has selected Linux as the platform of choice for supporting critical business applications, including those from SAP AG. It's another big endorsement of Linux as a platform to run applications that are central to the functioning of a business."

Comments (none posted)

Police put Linux on trial (ZDNet)

ZDNet UK reports on a Linux desktop trial by the West Yorkshire police; if all goes well, it will involve 3500 desktops and save the police £1 million per year. "If successful there could be a much wider deployment of a secure open-source desktop, with the potential replacement of over 60,000 desktop computers in the police service as a whole."

Comments (none posted)

Legal

Free Mickey Mouse (Economist)

The Economist reports on the Eldred v. Ashcroft arguments. "Facing Hollywood's battery of high-paid lawyers and lobbyists, Mr Lessig may seem hopelessly outgunned. But the case before the Supreme Court this week shows what determined public-interest lawyers such as Mr Lessig can achieve, even against heavy odds. And Mr Lessig has most consumers on his side, something that the entertainment industry, sooner or later, will have to reckon with."

Comments (none posted)

Perspective: The copyright conundrum (News.com)

News.com attempts to unravel the puzzle of U.S. copyright laws. "This renewed interest in copyright law could be a very good thing. The reason: More and more of what people do in real life--trading files on peer-to-peer networks and descrambling DVDs, for instance--has become illegal."

Comments (none posted)

Glitterati vs. Geeks (Newsweek)

Newsweek covers the Eldred v. Ashcroft case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. "Since the issues in the case don?t break down into liberal or conservative, legal handicappers are at a loss to predict the outcome. But everyone expects a vivid session as the justices grill [Lawrence] Lessig and, representing Congress and its Hollywood backers, Solicitor General Ted Olsen. Outside, there will be wireheads wearing T shirts emblazoned with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which contains the copyright clause."

Comments (none posted)

Lindows: Don't let Windows shut us down (ZDNet)

ZDNet reports on the status of Microsoft's legal case against Lindows. "Lindows' summary judgment filing, which opens with a cartoon poking fun at the origin of the Windows name, requests that the judge dismiss once and for all Microsoft's claims and its attempts to get the site shut down."

Comments (1 posted)

Eldred v. Ashcroft

For those of you who wish to keep up on the latest copyright issues, Eldred v. Ashcroft is a web site which is following an important ongoing court case. "This site collects material related to the constitutional challenge of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended by 20 years both existing copyrights and future copyrights."

Comments (none posted)

Interviews

Rethinking the GUI for the Big Picture (CIO Insight)

CIO Insight interviews computer scientist and entrepreneur David Gelernter on the topic of computer interface design. "I think the field of knowledge management is struggling to express the fact that it wants to move up an entire conceptual level from where conventional software has pegged it. It doesn't want to deal with traditional operating system ideas of files or even applications or data—or for that matter, information. All this is irrelevant. People want to connect directly at a higher level to the knowledge or the information that defines their lives, and they don't want to be boxed in by an operating system or any particular machine."

Comments (8 posted)

OpenOffice.org as a 2-year-old (NewsForge)

NewsForge talks with Sam Hiser of the OpenOffice.org Marketing Project. "Honestly, just [OpenOffice's] file format is enough to make governments around the world swoon. It's because, ex-USA, they are very nervous about a single entity (and an American one, to boot) controlling, like, noticeable portions of their national budgets and they just want to be sure that their citizens have open access to information forever. OpenOffice.org 1.0 / StarOffice 6.0 do that."

Comments (none posted)

Resources

Linux Journal's Annual Readers' Choice Awards

Linux Journal has posted the results of their 8th annual Readers' Choice Awards. To be in the main stream, you should be running Mandrake Linux, using bash under KDE, writing C programs with Vim, and browsing the web with Mozilla while drinking coffee.

Comments (1 posted)

Embedded Linux Newsletter

The Linux Devices Embedded Linux Newsletter for October 10, 2002 is out, with the usual collection of embedded Linux articles.

Full Story (comments: none)

Using CFS, the Cryptographic Filesystem (Linux Journal)

Here's a how-to article in the Linux Journal about the Cryptographic Filesystem. "Briefly, CFS allows you to safeguard your files in encrypted form in a normal directory. By using a key (or password, if you will), you temporarily decrypt your files to clear-text form for the window of time in which you need to work with them."

Comments (none posted)

Building a Linux-Based Appliance (Linux Journal)

Dave Feinleib and Jed Stafford detail the process behind the selection of the Linux platform for development of network "appliance" devices. "Have you ever solved the same system administration problem for many clients and wished you didn't have to reinvent the wheel every time? Or had the desire to build your own appliance but not known how? A recent consulting project gave us the incentive we needed to build our own appliance. By sharing the technical and business challenges we encountered and the solutions we implemented, we hope to offer some insight that will help you bring your own Linux-based appliance to market."

Comments (none posted)

Chroot Jails Made Easy with the Jail Chroot Project (Linux Orbit)

Linux Orbit looks at the Jail Chroot Project. "There are always difficult jobs to do as a GNU/Linux system administrator. Sometimes the difficulty lies in finding out how to do a particular job, not neccessarily the job itself. This can be particularly true in the open source world where documentation can often take a back seat to implementation. But once in a while, you can stumble on a real gem that simplifies even the most difficult administration tasks. One such gem is the Jail Chroot Project."

Comments (1 posted)

Radio E-mail in West Africa: The Complete Version (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal examines remote networking with high-frequency (HF) radio and qmail. "On top of the operator's radio set, connected to the serial port of his PC, sat a dingy black box simply labeled 9002 HF Data Modem. I noticed the operator used a proprietary, MS-DOS program to make his file transfers, but I immediately began wondering: if this device is truly some kind of modem, moving binary data over the ether of radio, why couldn't we set it up with Linux and network with PPP connections as well?"

Comments (none posted)

AcquiSuite -- a building automation data acquisition device (LinuxDevices)

LinuxDevices.com looks at AcquiSuite, a computerized device which is used for building automation and energy management. "The system's embedded Linux OS is based on a static-compiled v2.4.19 Linux kernel (soon to be updated). Libc 5 is used to reduce space. BusyBox and thttpd are used extensively in the system. The MTD Flash technology support for the DiskOnChip also turned out to be very valuable."

Comments (none posted)

Reviews

The incredible shrinking PC (ZDNet)

ZDNet reports on some new, miniature Linux machines that are showing up. "Some of the smallest PCs around were on show at the LinuxExpo in London's Olympia exhibition center last week. One was even smaller than a pack of playing cards."

Comments (none posted)

Miscellaneous

Tackling Breast Cancer on a Grid (Wired)

Oxford University's eDiamond grid computing project is using open source tools to combat breast cancer. "Applications developed for eDiamond will be incorporated into Open Grid Services Architecture when it becomes available in 2003. OGSA is an evolution of the Globus Toolkit, an open-source "bag of services" that can be used to develop grid applications and programming tools."

Comments (none posted)

Hackware Author Arrested -- Maybe (Wired)

Wired covers the arrest of a black hat cracker. "Torner's Linux-based Tornkit hacking program was hardly in the same league as Melissa or Love Bug, the mainstream Windows worms created by David Smith and Onel de Guzman, respectively. But to Teresa Hall and a group of other system administrators and Internet users, Torner was public enemy No. 1."

Comments (none posted)

Page editor: Forrest Cook
Next page: Announcements>>