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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading FOX's Anti-MASS FUD is a Dud (Groklaw)Groklaw dissects some FUD From Fox News. "If you go to Fox News, or in my case, if someone sends you the url, you find the following blurb: Wrong Move - Massachusetts adopts a bad technology policy that will cost taxpayers and consumers. Of course, it sends you to an editorial about the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' decision to use the OpenDocument format. And it's our chance to see inside of Microsoft's head, because it's a guest editorial by James Prendergast of Americans for Technology Leadership. The editorial has the hilarious title, "Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument." Like they could close down OpenDocument, even if they had a mind to."
Torvalds' Baby Comes of Age (BusinessWeek)BusinessWeek has an interview with Linus Torvalds. "What about Linux on the desktop? Why hasn't it taken off? Oh, it has absolutely taken off, but some people seem to think that "take off" means that suddenly everybody is running it. That's clearly not true. It's a very slow conversion. There are more people running it this year than there were last year, and it all looks and works a bit better all the time. But did everybody suddenly convert? No. It's one step at a time." (Thanks to Rolf Heckemann)
Cry freedom (Times Online)Times Online has an article by Gervase Markham. "And if you do not understand and value a freedom, it's very easy to lose it, or for someone to persuade you to give it up. You probably will not even notice it's gone until you need it and suddenly find it's not there. The pragmatic "use what's best" approach of Open Source leads to the conclusion that if another program is better, you should use it, even if it's not Open Source. So if Skype is the best software for making telephone calls over the net, you should choose it; after all, it's "free" - it costs nothing - right?"
Trade Shows and Conferences Community converges on Ohio LinuxFest (NewsForge)NewsForge reports from the Ohio Linux Fest. "The LinuxFest had three conference tracks, Userspace, Tech, and Community -- though several of the talks didn't quite fit the track that they were in. It didn't really matter -- most of the attendees were mixing and matching tracks liberally. I bounced among the different tracks, and noticed a lot of the same faces in each talk. The quality of the talks, overall, was very good. A few speakers were obviously a bit green when it comes to public speaking, but most of the people I talked to found the topics engaging anyway."
KDE at the 2005 Ohio Linux Fest (KDE.News)KDE.News covers the KDE presence at the 2005 Ohio Linux Fest. "With over 700 attendees and a speaking track packed full of goodies, the one-day Ohio Linux Fest held this past Saturday in the city of Columbus was an unqualified success. KDE had a booth at the event which was kept exceedingly busy the entire day. Most of the people who visited the booth mentioned that they use KDE and several asked that we pass on their appreciation to the entire KDE team for all the work that they have put into it over the years."
Companies Andreessen joins board of Zend Technologies (News.com)Marc Andreessen and Guarav Dhillon have joined the Zend Technologies board of directors. "Zend Technologies expanded its board of directors with Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen and Guarav Dhillon, who was founder and CEO of data integration software maker Informatica. Zend makes development tools for the open-source language PHP."
Linux Adoption Linux misses Windows of opportunity (The Age)An Australian publication called The Age looks at a failed attempt at a transition to Linux. "Mr Horton called in Red Hat-recommended contractors to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux and ensure it was configured according to SAP standards, a process which took two weeks. "You have to be using the right certified components, otherwise SAP won't give you the support. To go through and match everything off was quite tedious," Mr Horton says. "After doing all that, we came to a very interesting situation where the machine would basically, putting it in Windows terms, core dump or blue screen at random. It would run for weeks or so and then just bang, it would stop."" (Thanks to Andrew Kornak.)
French military body to install Linux cluster (Silicon.com)Silicon.com covers plans to install a high-performance Linux cluster for technical and scientific work, at an agency of the French Ministry of Defense. "The Technical Establishment of Bourges (ETBS), which tests and manufactures armaments, has issued a tender for the supply of a 64-bit Linux cluster, according to a document on an EU website. The deadline of the tender was reached on Thursday but it was unclear from the tender document when the ETBS plans to start implementing the cluster."
Legal Patent suits not likely, says IP attorney (IT Manager's Journal)IT Manager's Journal looks at reasons why suing open-source companies over patent issues may be unwise. "Proprietary software companies could sue open source software developers or end users for patent infringement, but they probably won't, says one intellectual property attorney. If they do, the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) plans to be ready. Though the threat of lawsuits is often heard rumbling over the horizon like an approaching storm, the potential benefits for patent holders probably aren't attractive enough to spark litigation, says James Gatto, a patent and intellectual property attorney with Pillsbury Winthrop law firm."
Microsoft's Linux-related patents rejected (ZDNet)ZDNet reports that the U.S. Patent Office has rejected Microsoft's FAT patents (which ZDNet calls "Linux-related"). "The patent office delivered its ruling late last month but made it public this week. With one of the patents, the decision is what's considered a final rejection, while with another it's considered nonfinal. In both cases, Microsoft has the ability to pursue its claims further."
The Idea Economy (Herald Tribune)The International Herald Tribune has taken a look at the patent system. "'In certain cases,' said Elsa Lion, an analyst at the London research firm Ovum, 'technology companies are beginning to realize they have more to gain by releasing patents to the general public than by hoarding licensing income.' By giving away some of their knowledge, companies like IBM and Nokia are not just polishing their image among the Internet generation. They also questioning a business strategy that has become a bedrock of contemporary capitalism: Whoever has the most patents wins."
Interviews David Sugar talks about GNU Bayonne (NewsForge)NewsForge talks with GNU Bayonne developer David Sugar. "Bayonne started as a platform that allows one to create and deploy applications that interact by voice and through TouchTone keypads with people over the telephone network. Bayonne includes its own scripting language for writing telephony applications, which is designed for use in very high port -capacity solutions, as well as offering services to telephony enable Perl, Python, and other common scripting languages."
Resources First Monday open source specialThe October 2005 edition of First Monday is all about open source. There are several new articles (by Benjamin Mako Hill, Bruce Perens, and others) along with reprints of many older pieces. Even if you didn't want to read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" again, there's some interesting stuff here.
What Is Free Software (O'ReillyNet)Karl Fogel defines "free software" in this O'ReillyNet article. "Free software is software that may be modified and redistributed freely by anyone, with no significant restrictions on how the code may be changed, the uses to which it may be put, or the parties with whom it may be shared. From this simple definition flow many unexpected consequences."
What Is Quartz (O'ReillyNet)Chuck Cavaness introduces Quartz on O'Reilly. "Quartz is an open source job-scheduling framework written entirely in Java and designed for use in both J2SE and J2EE applications. It offers great flexibility without sacrificing simplicity. You can create simple or complex schedules for executing any job. It includes features such as database support, clustering, plugins, prebuilt jobs for EJB, JavaMail and others, support for cron-like expressions, and many more."
What Is Web 2.0 (O'Reilly)Tim O'Reilly introduces Web 2.0. "The bursting of the dot-com bubble in the fall of 2001 marked a turning point for the web. Many people concluded that the web was overhyped, when in fact bubbles and consequent shakeouts appear to be a common feature of all technological revolutions. Shakeouts typically mark the point at which an ascendant technology is ready to take its place at center stage. The pretenders are given the bum's rush, the real success stories show their strength, and there begins to be an understanding of what separates one from the other."
Converting from CVS to Subversion with cvs2svn (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet covers CVS to Subversion conversion with cvs2svn. "Before you start converting, you may need to do a little housekeeping on your CVS repository. First and foremost, make a copy of your CVS repository and work only with the copy--I can't stress this enough. A lot of the cleanup work we're going to do here can be done after you've converted, but I prefer to do the work before converting as it makes for a "cleaner" Subversion repository."
Protecting Files at Home Using Encrypted Containers (Linux Journal)The Linux Journal has posted a tutorial on the use of dm_crypt to create encrypted filesystems within files. "I have read many articles on encrypting entire partitions and drives, but I chose to use containers instead. By using containers, I have the flexibility to move them around, back them up to CD or DVD and not mount them when I don't need them.
Reviews The $100 laptop moves closer to reality (News.com)News.com follows the progress of a project that aims to produce a $100 windup-powered laptop computer that runs Linux. ""This is the most important thing I have ever done in my life," Negroponte said on Wednesday during a presentation at Technology Review's Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT. "Reception has been incredible. The idea is simple. It's an education project, not a laptop project. If we can make education better--particularly primary and secondary schools--it will be a better world." He said a goal of the project is to make the low-cost PC idea a grassroots movement that will spread in popularity, like the Linux operating system or the Wikipedia free online encyclopedia. "This is open-source education. It's a big issue."
AOpen box inspired by Mac Mini (News.com)News.com looks at new Pentium D-based computers from AOpen. "Taiwanese computer maker AOpen is scheduled to release two versions of its Pandora desktop just in time for the holiday shopping season, the company said Thursday. The company said Apple Computer's Mac Mini inspired its latest desktop PC. Pandora is one of several 2-inch-tall computers being sold as home entertainment PCs. A Linux-based version of the mini tower is expected to sell at retail for $399, while the Windows XP-based box will go for $499."
Apache's Beehive 1.0 generates buzz (News.com)News.com notes the Beehive 1.0 release. "Beehive consists of three main parts: NetUI, Controls and Web Service Metadata (WSM). NetUI is an MVC framework built on top of Apache Struts, adding a set of JSP tags for building HTML pages, and more complex UI controls such as data grids. Controls are back-end J2EE classes aimed at providing a consistent interface to different data sources and other resources."
What Is Asterisk (O'ReillyNet)O'Reillynet offers an introduction to Asterisk. "Simply put, Asterisk is the most flexible and extensible telephone system in existence. Full source code is available, so if you need a feature you can add it yourself. Although I must say, they've done a very thorough job with the first release. Try asking your current PBX vendor for full source code for their PBXs. Hell, just try asking them for documentation."
A first look at GIMP 2.4 (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at what's coming with the GIMP 2.4 release. "2.4 is the first GIMP release to support color management, a feature dearly missed by photographers and designers up until now. In the preferences dialog you will find a new Color Management control panel where you can set rendering intent and specify your working colorspace and device profiles."
Radio's Next Generation: Radii (Linux Journal)Linux Journal takes a look at the Linux-powered device called Radii. "Radii is a radio: a box with buttons and dials used to select bands and tune stations in a familiar way. Because this radio receives Internet radio, it provides hundreds of noise-free stations with a wide variety of listening options. The band selection dial, instead of AM and FM, is used to select genres such as News, Sports and Rock. The station selection dial scrolls through station names that can be tuned by clicking the select button."
Trusted Linux will wear a Red Hat (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at Trusted Linux. "Last October, Trusted Computer Solutions announced it would release Trusted Linux, a version of the open source operating system that is hardened enough to meet the requirements of the United States Director of Central Intelligence. This week, TCS said it is instead teaming up with IBM and Red Hat, and that Trusted Linux will now be released as an as-yet-unnamed Red Hat product in 2006."
Darik's Boot and Nuke: A great tool for obliterating your data (NewsForge)NewsForge has a review of Darik's Boot and Nuke. "Do you know what happened to your data when you disposed of your last PC? With identity theft on the rise, it's important to make sure your information is removed before you get rid of that old hard drive. Thanks to the work of developer Darik Horn, there's an excellent tool to wipe data off of a hard disk: Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN)."
The Arrival of NX, Part 5: Using NX (Linux Journal)Kurt Pfeifle continues this series on NX on Linux Journal. "The NoMachine NX Client license says, "Redistribution of NX Client software, including commercial Closed Source packages, is allowed, free of charge, for commercial and non-commercial use...". This enabled Klaus Knopper to include the NoMachine NX Client in Knoppix, versions 3.6 and later, even though it is not free software. It also is included in Kanotix. The NX Client is released in binary form under a free for commercial and non-commercial use license similar to the Adobe Acrobat reader software that we find in most Linux distributions. A KDE-based NX client, kNX, also is available. kNX works and is used by quite a few people daily, but it more of a proof-of-concept implementation, though, and its use is not yet generally recommended."
Miscellaneous Open Graphics Project Status Update (KernelTrap)KernelTrap has a status report on the Open Graphics Project. "I started the Open Graphics Project in October of 2004 at Tech Source, Inc. I suggested to my employer and to the world that a worthwhile product category, which doesn't currently exist, is graphics cards that are designed specifically with Free and Open Source software (FOSS) in mind. Rather than having to beg graphics card vendors for access to their register specs, I thought it would be easier to just ask members of the FOSS community what kind of hardware they need, work with them to develop a specification, and then build that hardware. "Open Architecture" became the main idea, making it easy for FOSS developers to get the information they need to develop FOSS drivers to take full advantage of the hardware." (Thanks to Bernard Bencic)
From the Editor - dmarti:~$ logout (Linux Journal)Don Marti concludes his Linux Journal column with some advice. "Since this is my last column as editor in chief, I get to give a bunch of advice, so I'll cover two great inventions that we should all take a fresh look at and come up with more things like them. First, the most important technology for the Internet isn't on the Internet. Want a hint? 12:00. 12:00. 12:00. The second most important technology has a symbol that you probably look at in a Web browser several times a day."
Linux Licensing: barriers to developers (ZDNet)ZDNet's Paul Murphy is trying to convince us that the GPL is a problem. "The GPL works, and works well, to empower innovation - but also represents a peaceful implementation of Karl Marx's famous dictum that the state should take from each individual according to the individual's abilities, and give to each individual according to that individual's needs. Indeed the GPL doesn't different in principle (although it's certainly dramatically different in practice!) from the communist Chinese policy of state confiscation of intellectual property for state use." It seems he prefers the CDDL.
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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