Non-Commercial announcements
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent out a media release regarding
the new Online Rights Canada organization.
"
Online Rights Canada (ORC) launched in Canada
Friday, giving Canadians a new voice in critical technology
and information policy issues. The grassroots organization
is jointly supported by the Canadian Internet Policy &
Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) and the Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF)."
Full Story (comments: none)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent out a press release
concerning their suit over the illegal certification of
three electronic voting systems in North Carolina.
"
North Carolina law requires the Board of Elections to
rigorously review all voting system code "prior to
certification." Ignoring this requirement, the Board of
Elections on December 1st certified voting systems offered
by Diebold Election Systems, Sequoia Voting Systems, and
Election Systems and Software without having first obtained
let alone reviewed the system code.
"This is about the rule of law," said EFF Staff Attorney
Matt Zimmerman. "The Board of Elections has simply ignored
its mandatory obligations under North Carolina election
law."
Full Story (comments: 18)
The FFII has sent out a dispatch (click below) on the adoption of the data
retention directive by the European Parliament. It looks like a worst-case
outcome: massive privacy invasion, few limits on how data can be used (the
entertainment industry will be pleased), and more. "
Among other harsh measures, the
directive mandates recording of the source and destination of all
emails you send and every call you make, and your location and
movement during mobile phone calls. Additionally, the directive says
nothing about who has to pay for all this logging, which will
significantly distort the internal telecommunications market."
Full Story (comments: 33)
The preliminary results for this year's GNOME Foundation board election
have been posted. The board going forward would appear to consist of Luis
Villa, Jeff Waugh, Federico Mena-Quintero, Jonathan Blandford, David Neary,
Anne Østergaard, and Vincent Untz. Click below for the full results.
Full Story (comments: none)
KDE.News
reports on the
creation of KDE India. "
A group of enthusiastic KDE users and
developers met last week at the FOSS.IN conference in Bangalore, one of the
largest Free and Open Source Software meetings in the world, to combine
their efforts in various regions of the country under a common banner and
build a central platform for all things KDE in India. Along with spreading
KDE awareness in India, especially in colleges and with local businesses,
KDE.in has a few more practical goals. KDE.in will provide Indian KDE
developers and users with a community hub to coordinate with and support
each other."
Comments (1 posted)
Commercial announcements
Telecom provider Alcatel will be using the MySQL cluster database,
according to this
press release.
"
Under the agreement, Alcatel will use the high-availability MySQL Cluster database in its Multi-access Data Server (MDS) platform, to be used as part of several Alcatel network products, including the Home Location Register (HLR), IP Multimedia Home Subscriber Server (IM-HSS) and Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) systems."
Comments (none posted)
Genuitec has announced the release of MyEclipse 4.1.
"
Backed by world-class support, MyEclipse is the
comprehensive J2EE®- and Web-development tool suite
designed for Enterprise developers and consultants looking for top value in
a commercial-grade Integrated Development Environment (IDE). MyEclipse 4.1
is the first Eclipse-based platform to support AJAX development, offer an
integrated image editor and include new Web 2.0 development capabilities."
Full Story (comments: none)
SGI has
announced the selection of an SGI 1280 processor supercomputer
by Tohoku University's Institute of Fluid Science.
"
The new supercomputer, shipped this summer, is comprised of a scalable
SGI(R) Altix(R) 3000 scalar parallel server based on the 64-bit Linux(R)
OS, a vector parallel NEC computer, a scalable Silicon Graphics Prism(TM)
visualization system, external secondary storage systems and data archive
systems, all of which are interconnected via high-speed network, enabling
sharing of large files with the SGI(R) InfiniteStorage CXFS(TM) shared
filesystem and the NEC GFS global file system attached to the Storage Area
Network (SAN)."
Comments (none posted)
SugarCRM Inc. has
announced the release of version 4.0 of their Sugar Suite
customer relationship management (CRM) software.
"
Guided by customer and
community input, Sugar Suite 4.0 introduces powerful new functionality such as
advanced reporting and customizable dashboards, campaign management, workflow
management and access control, email processing and enhanced lead sharing."
Comments (none posted)
Novell has
announced a deal with the Swiss federal government whereby much of the federal infrastructure will move over to SUSE Linux. All told, Novell expects that over 3000 servers will run SUSE.
Comments (5 posted)
VMware, Inc. has
announced their new VMware Player.
"
VMware, Inc., the global leader
in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, today
announced the general availability of VMware Player, a free new product that
enables anyone to easily run, evaluate and share software in a virtual machine
on a Windows or Linux PC. In addition, VMware announced that it has partnered
with the Mozilla Corporation to deliver the Browser Appliance, a virtual
machine powered by Mozilla Firefox that allows users to securely browse the
Internet."
Comments (none posted)
New Books
The book
Counter Hack Reloaded, Second Edition by Edward Skoudis
and Tom Liston will be published by Prentice Hall, PTR on December 30.
Full Story (comments: none)
O'Reilly has published the book
Designing Interfaces
by Jenifer Tidwell.
Full Story (comments: none)
O'Reilly has published the book
Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
by Elisabeth Freeman and Eric Freeman.
Full Story (comments: none)
O'Reilly has published the book
Linux Multimedia Hacks by Kyle Rankin.
Full Story (comments: none)
SitePoint has published the book
Run Your Own Linux & Apache Web Server
by Stuart Langridge and Tony Steidler-Dennison.
Full Story (comments: none)
Prentice Hall has published the book
Point & Click OpenOffice.org by Robin 'Roblimo' Miller.
Full Story (comments: none)
O'Reilly has published the book
Wireless Networking Magic
by Rob Flickenger and Roger Weeks.
Full Story (comments: none)
Resources
The December 8, 2005 edition of the Free Software Foundation Europe
Newsletter is online. Topics include:
First Austrian Fellowship meeting, Tweakfest in Zurich,
UN World Summit on Information Society, LinuxWorld Expo in Frankfurt/Main,
Seminar in Dublin about preventing software patentability,
Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre in Rosario (Argentinia),
LinuxDay in Italy, Removal of Free Software from WSIS "Vienna Conclusions"
and Welcoming the Free Software Foundation Latin America.
Full Story (comments: none)
Surveys
GnomeDesktop.org
requests your input
for the 2006 GNOME marketing slogan.
Comments (1 posted)
Upcoming Events
Novell, Inc. has
announced
the dates for its BrainShare Conference, March 19 - 24, 2006.
"
Attendees will be able to select from over 200 sessions conducted by
Novell employees, customers and partners, with topics ranging from
enterprise data center management to implementing open source software and
securing IT information assets."
Comments (none posted)
LinuxMedNews has announced a
call for papers for a special track on the use of
OSS and ODF in Health and Medical Systems at the
IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems.
The conference will take place in Salt Lake City, Utah on June
22 and 23, 2006.
Comments (none posted)
Registration for PyCon 2006 is open. The event will take place in
Addison, Texas on February 24-26, 2006.
Full Story (comments: none)
The Modern Computer Music and DSP Programming Tools Workshop will be
held in Mainz, Germany on December 20, 2005.
Full Story (comments: none)
| Date | Event | Location |
| December 15 - 20, 2005 | Umeet Virtual
Meeting(UMEET 2005) | Online |
| December 15, 2005 | 24th Annual Minnesota
Government IT Symposium | St. Paul, Minnesota |
| December 27 - 30, 2005 | 22nd Chaos
Communication Congress | Berlin, Germany |
| January 13 - 15, 2006 | ShmooCon
2006 | (Wardman Park Marriott Hotel)Washington, D.C. |
| January 23 - 28, 2006 | linux.conf.au
2006 | Dunedin, New Zealand |
| January 23 - 25, 2006 | Black Hat Federal
Briefings and Training 2006 | (Sheraton Crystal City)Washington, D.C. |
| January 24 - 26, 2006 | O'Reilly
Emerging Telephony Conference | (San Francisco Airport Marriott)San Francisco,
CA |
Comments (none posted)
Web sites
Segetech Ltd has announced the launch of their
Segetech Open Source Rendezvous
site.
"
Segetech, Ltd., provider of Open Source
customization and integration services, today announced the launch of
Segetech Open Source Rendezvous portal. The portal contains detailed
guides to configure and integrate some of the most widely used Open Source
components as seamless computing environments. The site is available
immediately without registration or membership fee."
Full Story (comments: none)
Page editor: Forrest Cook
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