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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading Malware: Serious Business (Dark Reading)Criminal justice professor Thomas Holt presented the findings from his study of malware markets at Defcon 2007. Dark Reading provides coverage of the talk. "The average hackers' forum works much like a combination of eBay and a department store site, Holt reports. Many are divided into areas of interest -- such as programming, scripting, Mac, or Linux -- and there usually is some sort of buying area where shoppers can purchase tools or exploits, such as bots or credit card data collectors."
Why Microsoft Is Going Open Source (Linux Journal)Glyn Moody analyzes Microsoft's recent open source moves in a Linux Journal blog posting. "This, I think, goes to the heart of Microsoft's open source strategy. As well as adopting those aspects of an alternative development model that it finds useful, Microsoft is aiming to blunt the undeniable power of openness by hollowing it out. If OOXML is an open standard, and some of its own software licences become OSI-approved, Microsoft will be able to claim that it, too, is an open standard, open source company. For many busy managers, subject to all kinds of demands including increasing pressure to 'go open source' - the difference between Microsoft's open source and real open source won't matter, in the same way that the difference between Microsoft's open file formats and those of the OpenDocument Format won't really matter. In terms of keeping people happy, what matters for many is the label the appearance of going open and Microsoft's moves aim to provide just that."
Trade Shows and Conferences Black Hat USA 2007: That's a wrap (Linux.com)Linux.com's Joe Barr reports from this year's Black Hat conference. "I had one particular question in mind when I came to Black Hat this year: who does the the black hat ops for the United States? Unfortunately, I still don't have a good answer for that, though I probably have a better understanding than when I arrived. Black Hat and Defcon are crawling with feds each year, but all the feds who are willing to talk even in general terms about what they do say they are involved in keeping the bad guys out of our computers, not breaking into the Department of Defense systems in Hackistan, or wherever."
Embedded conference features Linux track (LinuxDevices)LinuxDevices notes that there will be a Linux track at the Embedded Systems Conference East. "The East Coast version of CMP's semi-annual embedded developer conference will once again include a track devoted to Linux and open source. Set for Sept. 18-21 in Boston, the Embedded Systems Conference East is co-located this year with conferences on Web development, software development, and RFID."
Open-source replacement for Microsoft Project on its way (Linux-Watch)Linux-Watch reports that Projity plans to announce some OpenProj deployments at the upcoming LinuxWorld conference. "With over 28 million project managers and users already using Microsoft Project, Projity executives believes that is considerable room for an inexpensive, open-source project management program like OpenProj. According to the company, instead of a $1,000 license fee for Microsoft Project, Projity customers can download OpenProj for free and use it anytime they want from their machine. Project teams can access the same documents and collaborate on projects, which enables distributed project teams to save time and money."
Andrew Morton calls for more kernel testing (Linux.com)Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier covers a LinuxWorld keynote by Andrew Morton. "During the opening keynote at this week's LinuxWorld Expo, kernel developer Andrew Morton called for more assistance in testing the Linux kernel from users, and predicted that virtualization would be the big thing for the next few years of kernel development."
aKademy 2007: Text Layout Summit (KDE.News)KDE.News covers the Text Layout Summit at aKademy 2007. "The Text Layout Summit was a true cross platform event, and followed from the one last year at the Gnome Summit. Text layout is a complex area requiring advanced knowledge of dozens of different writing methods. With funding from The Linux Foundation they brought together people from Pango, Qt, IBM ICU (Intl. Components for Unicode), SIL Graphite, Unifont.org, m17n, W3C and DejaVu. Getting the various widget sets to have the same high quality support for all scripts is a problem the summit hoped to solve."
Text Layout Summit 2007 Takes Place in Glasgow (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org covers the FreeDesktop.org Text Layout Summit 2007. "The FreeDesktop.org Text Layout Summit 2007 took place in July in Glasgow. With funding from The Linux Foundation they brought together people from Pango, Qt, IBM ICU (Intl. Components for Unicode), SIL Graphite, Unifont.org, m17n, W3C and DejaVu. Getting the various widget sets to have the same high quality support for all scripts is a problem the summit hoped to solve."
Companies Acer Installing Linux on Some Notebooks (PC World)PC World reports that Acer is experimenting with the sale of Linux laptops in Singapore. "While Memory World's offer has attracted attention outside Singapore for the use of Ubuntu on a notebook, Acer did not ship these notebooks with the Linux distribution preinstalled, said Ignatius Beh, a Memory World sales executive. "We actually installed it ourselves," Beh said. Acer shipped the notebooks to Memory World with another version of Linux installed, he said. At the time of writing, Acer did not respond to a request for comment."
Lenovo, Novell partner to offer Linux on the ThinkPad (ars technica)ars technica reports on the Novell-Lenovo announcement of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop preinstalled on Lenovo ThinkPad laptops. "Unlike Dell, which has targeted its Linux offering primarily at the enthusiast community, Lenovo's SLED laptops are targeted at the enterprise. Whether they are running Ubuntu, SLED, or some other distribution, the availability of Linux preinstallation from mainstream vendors increases the visibility of the operating system and gives component makers an incentive to provide better Linux drivers and hardware support. If Lenovo is willing to collaborate with the Linux development community to improve the Linux laptop user experience, it will be a big win for all Linux users, not just the ones who buy laptops from Lenovo."
Is IBM's Big Iron also Big Green? (InfoWorld)InfoWorld reports on IBM's efforts to save power by moving 3,900 of its servers to 30 virtualized System z9 mainframes. ""The cost of energy, power to run computers, storage, and networking equipment, as well as the power to the cooling equipment, is becoming the highest single cost of managing a datacenter," says David Gelardi, VP of industry solutions at IBM. "IBM took a look at these very interesting plums coming to the forefront at the same time. We have an opportunity with systems management tools, with Linux, and with virtualization, to be able to take the workloads that are principally running on much smaller, underutilized Unix servers and move them over to those 30 very large mainframes.""
Interviews Dirk Hohndel speaks (CNet)Matt Asay interviews Dirk Hohndel on his CNet weblog. "Open-source software is one of the pillars of the software stacks that our customers use today. We want to ensure that these stacks support Intel's leading technologies as we introduce them to the market and that customers have an incentive to run their software stacks on Intel hardware. This results in people recommending Intel."
People Behind KDE: Summer of Code 2007 (1/4) (KDE.News)KDE.News introduces this People Behind KDE interview with some of the Google Summer of Code participants. "The People Behind KDE series takes a temporary break, as we talk to students who are working on KDE as part of the Google Summer of Code 2007 - in the first of four interview articles, meet Aleix Pol Gonzàlez, Piyush Verma, Mike Arthur and Nick Shaforostoff!"
Resources Email Classification (Incl. Spam Classification) With POPFile On Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (HowtoForge)HowtoForge shows how to use POPFile on the Ubuntu Feisty Fawn distribution. "This article shows how you can install and use POPFile to classify incoming emails on an Ubuntu Feisty Fawn desktop. It is a POP3 proxy that fetches your mails from your mail server, classifies them and passes them on to your email client."
Quicktoots 17 announcedA new version of the Quicktoots guide to Linux audio applications is out. "DJing is an artform and freewheeling with JACK on Linux makes it possible to amaze your audience with live remixes of rare cuts and hidden gems that when put together produce sample Heaven... Ringheims Auto shows us how it's done."
Reviews Azureus vs. KTorrent (Linux.com)Anze Vidmar compares Azureus to KTorrent in a Linux.com article. "BitTorrent is popular peer-to-peer sharing communication protocol used for transferring all kind of files over the Internet. Two of the most popular BitTorrent clients for Linux are Azureus and KTorrent. If you're looking for a robust, fast, simple, and powerful BitTorrent client, you will probably go with KTorrent. If you want a Java-based client that runs on every platform and allows you to configure every detail for BitTorrent transfer, consider Azureus."
Portrait of a Linux iPhone-killer wannabe (ComputerWorld)ComputerWorld has published a lengthy look at the OpenMoko phone with a lot of talk with OpenMoko architect Sean Moss-Pultz. "In fact, the most intriguing possibilities are in the enterprise, where Linux servers and applications are common, he stressed... 'Pretty much all the big enterprises have contacted us and are interested,' he said. 'Enterprises have scores of IT staff who can customize and maintain Linux applications. With this phone, the company can customize it exactly the way they want it for their employees.' By contrast, most cell phones are notoriously uncustomizable."
Linux gains free telecom-oriented IPC stack (LinuxDevices)LinuxDevices covers the release of Linx for Linux. "A year later than expected, Enea has released an open source Linux version of its flagship IPC (interprocess communication) stack. The GPL/BSD-licensed Linx stack could allow for tighter control- and data-plane integration in mobile phones and telecom infrastructure equipment combining Linux with Enea's OSE/OSEck RTOS (real-time operating system)."
Miscellaneous What could you do with fat fiber? (Linux Journal)Doc Searls wonders about fiber. "Two years ago, Bob Frankston wrote Why Settle for Just 1%? while in the midst of his ramp-up as a Verizon FiOS customer. The question is still on the table. I'd like us to help answer it by re-phrasing the question: What could we, as Linux developers and users, do with fiber to our homes and businesses?"
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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