Recommended Reading
ZDNet
looks at the
European Commission report recommending greater governmental use of
open source software. "
The study does not say that European
governments should use off-the-shelf open-source software from companies
such as Red Hat, but rather focuses on specialized software produced
in-house by public authorities. Such software is typically used for the
administration of roads, hospitals and public health, education, tax
payment and recovery, justice, and territory management."
Comments (none posted)
According to
this
News.com article, the parties involved have decided not to appeal the
2600 (New York) DVD case. "
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF), which represents the magazine, said other cases in the future 'will
provide a better foundation for the Supreme Court to act on the problems
created by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.'"
Comments (none posted)
The Christian Science Monitor has
an opinion
column on the excesses of current copyright law. "
These are mere
annoyances, however, compared with what's coming next: the computer as
informational Coke machine, on which we have to pay for every view. As
publishers move increasingly to the Web, for example, they will be able to
restrict not just access, but downloading and printing as well."
Comments (none posted)
News.com is running
an article that looks into the problem of sites that
use broken web standards, and only support the Internet Explorer browser.
"
Non-agnostic Web sites "are saying, 'We're only interested in people if they use this browser,'" said Janet Daly, a representative for standards group the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). "That's a mistake on their part. The browser is a basic utility for people, and it's about having access to information regardless of who made that information or what authoring tool they used.""
Comments (13 posted)
Business
Linux Magazine has
some suggestions on making a living in the Linux world.
"
Can't stomach the idea of working on Microsoft software? Then consider picking up Web development, eXtensible Markup Language (XML), and the Web Services XML trifecta of Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Web Services Definition Language (WSDL), and Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI). Trust me, with sufficient knowledge of those protocols, you won't have any trouble finding a job this year."
Comments (none posted)
Doc Searls points out transparency as, perhaps, the greatest virtue of free
software in
this Linux Journal
article.
"
But most significantly, stockholders are finally--thanks
to Enron and WorldCom--fed up with opaque accounting
practices.
How long will it take before they get equally as fed
up with opaque infrastructural software?"
Comments (none posted)
Interviews
The Easino site has
an
interview with John Cox, the lead developer of PostNuke. "
As far
as our relationship [with PHP-Nuke], quite frankly we have none. If we are
aware of a security hole from the legacy code, we will forward it to
Mr. Burzi, but seldom (if ever) get a reply."
Comments (none posted)
Resources
The
LinuxDevices
Embedded Linux Newsletter for July 4, 2002 is available. See what's
new in Embedded Linux.
Comments (none posted)
The Linux Journal
looks at the Linux
in One Stanza Project, which seeks to distribute Linux usage tips via
short email signatures. "
As time went, however, the team found that
readership of e-mail
signature tips was about 80%, much higher than any of the other information
available on the server. So, more attention was paid to developing these
short, info-containing signatures to disseminate Linux-related
knowledge."
Comments (4 posted)
Reviews
LinuxOrbit
reviews
the FREESCO firewall distribution. "
I gave it a shot and was
very impressed. It seems ideal for someone who wants to get a quick and
secure protected network up with some enhanced services behind it."
Full Story (comments: 1)
Mozillaquest
reviews the tabbed browsing capabilities of KDE's Konqueror browser.
"
The K Desktop Environment (KDE) certainly has done lots to narrow the gap between the Linux desktop and the Microsoft Windows desktop. And the addition of tabbed-browsing to KDE's Konqueror browser is one more large step in closing that gap. In our opinion, the K Desktop Environment already is just as good as, if not better than, the MS Windows desktop."
Comments (none posted)
TuxReports
reviews KWord 1.2beta2.
"
Many bug reports were sent to the development team because people didn't realize that the application was not meant to be WYSIWYG.
Apparently the team changed it's mind and the latest 1.2beta2 offering is extremely good at matching the print preview with the document."
Comments (none posted)
TekCentral
takes
a look at the Simputer. "
A little fact that Cnet neglected to
mention was that all the information required to manufacture the product
is available under the Simputer Trust's own hardware license, the
SGPL. As the name suggests, the license is inspired by the GNU GPL. The
SGPL differs in many ways though, the main way is that if you use the
information for a commercial product you must make a one-off payment to
the Simputer Trust ($25,000 for devloping countries and $250,000 for
developed countries)." (Thanks to Thesmelialichu)
Comments (none posted)
Miscellaneous
Wired News
covers
the recent death of Gnutella hacker Gene Kan. "
Kan, peer-to-peer
file-sharing programmer extraordinaire, died on June 29. His professional
life revolved around developing new ways to share information easily and
quickly. Thousands of people use Gnutella to swap files, a program Kan was
instrumental in developing and promoting."
Comments (3 posted)
The Register
reports on
Congressman Rick Boucher and his legislative efforts. "
We don't
know what holy light guides Rep. Boucher, but it's a holy light
indeed: he's singular amongst public representatives in daring to reclaim the
works of popular culture as something that belong to The Commons (that's us)
... rather than something that belongs in perpetuity to an industry that
depends on its legitimacy on an antiquated distribution system."
Comments (none posted)
Here's
a TechWeb article on how Johns Hopkins University is using a Linux cluster for ocean modeling. "
Johns Hopkins' staff considered systems from Silicon Graphics Inc. and Sun Microsystems but ultimately chose Dell and Linux because of price. An expensive supercomputer was out of the question."
Comments (none posted)
News.com
reports on
the porting of various operating systems to the Itanium architecture.
"
MSC Software came out with its own version of Linux for Itanium 2 on Monday. The Department of Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will incorporate HP Itanium 2 servers running MSC's Linux into a clustered supercomputer."
Comments (none posted)
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