Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
Public Patent Foundation challenges JPEG patent
The Public Patent Foundation has announced that it has filed a formal challenge to the image compression patent currently being used by Forgent in its shakedown attempts. The full request for reexamination is available in PDF format.Sony's rootkit EULA
One might think that Sony's rootkit-installing CD was bad enough as it was. But the EFF read the accompanying license agreement and found that it gets worse. "Sony-BMG can install and use backdoors in the copy protection software or media player to 'enforce their rights' against you, at any time, without notice. And Sony-BMG disclaims any liability if this 'self help' crashes your computer, exposes you to security risks, or any other harm."
Commercial announcements
Cell Broadband Engine Software Development Kit Version 1.0
IBM has released version 1.0 of the Cell Broadband Engine Software Development Kit "The Cell Broadband Engine (CBE) is a breakthrough microprocessor with unique capabilities for applications requiring video, 3D graphics, or high-performance computation for imaging, security, visualization, healthcare, surveillance and more. Based on the Power ArchitectureTM, a choreographed high-bandwidth memory architecture, and multicore technology, the Cell BE has been shown to accelerate some algorithms to many times the speed of a traditional microprocessor. Cell Broadband Engine (CBE) Software Development Kit Version 1.0 provides everything Cell software developers need to create, build, simulate, and test Cell applications. The SDK enables a cross development environment which is hosted on fedora 4/x86 platforms."
IBM Teams Up With Net Integration
IBM and Net Integration Technologies have announced a partnership. "Net Integration's Nitix for application servers has obtained "Ready for IBM DB2 Software for Linux" designation. With IBM DB2 universal database on Net Integrations Nitix technology, SME's can benefit from affordable autonomic features such as Linux reliability, affordability, intelligent and quick installation, and automatic back up of application program files and data."
Mercury and Terra Soft Offer Linux for Cell-based Products
Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. has announced its collaboration with Terra Soft Solutions to deliver a complete Linux distribution for the Mercury Dual Cell-Based Blade. The Dual Cell-Based Blade is Mercury's first product based on the IBM(R) Cell BE (Broadband Engine) processor.Here comes another Microsoft-funded report
It seems we were due for yet another Microsoft-funded study showing what an expensive pain Linux is. "To compare reliability and manageability differences between Microsoft Windows- and Linux-based solutions, SI delved into the true extent that maintenance, patch application and system failures contribute to IT pain and cost as business requirements evolve over time. Simulating a real-world enterprise e-commerce environment over the course of a year, SI compared two teams of experienced IT administrators as they maintained and enhanced on Windows Server 2000 and Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux 8, then upgraded to Windows Server 2003 and Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux 9, respectively." Reading the results, one might wonder how people manage to operate Linux systems at all.
OpenMFG Launches Development Partner Program
OpenMFG, LLC has announced an expansion of its OpenMFG Partner Program. "The new program will significantly expand the opportunities for developers and systems integrators to build software solutions on the OpenMFG platform. OpenMFG's flagship product is an advanced Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software solution built with open source components, such as the Linux operating system, the PostgreSQL database, and the OpenRPT report writer."
PalmSource Joins Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum
PalmSource, Inc. has announced its membership in the the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum. "The LiPS Forum, a consortium of leading companies, has come together to accelerate the adoption of Linux in fixed, mobile and converged devices by standardizing Linux-based services and APIs that most directly influence the development, deployment and interoperability of applications and user-level services. Alongside PalmSource, the founding members include France Telecom/Orange, FSM Labs, Huawei, Jaluna, MontaVista Software, MIZI Research, Open Plug, Arm, Cellon and Esmertec."
Pentek Releases Software Radio Development Platform Compliance
Pentek has announced their Software Radio Development Platform with SCA Compliance. "Pentek, Inc., the industry pioneer of VME board-level technology, today released a development platform containing all hardware and tools required for software-defined radio development compliant with the Software Communication Architecture (SCA) mandated for all future U.S. military radios."
Rocketcalc Announces New Opteron Personal Clusters
Rocketcalc has announced a new line of personal clusters that use Dual-Core AMD Opteron Processors and run SuSE Linux. "Rocketcalc announced today the Saturn 270 HE personal cluster with sixteen AMD Opteron(TM) processor cores. Available with up to 64 GB total RAM and 8 Gbps total network bandwidth, Saturn brings serious 64-bit cluster computing power to your desk in a compact, quiet and affordable package."
Safe Snaps announces photo archive service
Safesnaps has launched an online photo archive service. "Unix kernel veterans recently launched a new digital photo archive service for individuals and commercial clients who need to know their snapshots are secure. Safe Snaps (www.safesnaps.com) stores pictures, allows for easy retrieval by subscribers and can backup work on demand."
New Super Computing Hardware
SGI, Linux Networx and Penguin Computing have announced new hardware at SuperComputing 2005 (November 12 - 18, in Seattle, Washington). Here is a press release from SGI on the new Altix 4000 platform. eWeek looks at new releases from Linux Networx and Penguin Computing.Terra Soft Launches Bioinformatics Package for Linux
Terra Soft Solutions has launched its Y-Bio Bioinformatics Package for Linux. "Built upon the RPM Linux standard for package management, Y-Bio offers industry standards NCBI BLAST, EMBOSS, Glimmer, ClustalW, HMMER, Wise, and FastA -- tools which help bioinformatics researchers conduct genetic sequence analysis."
Linux Emporium comes to Brum
Thyme Software Ltd has acquired the Linux Emporium. "Steve Whitehouse, who has been running the well known Linux Emporium for the past two years has transferred the business to Thyme Software Ltd, in a seamless move facilitated by Steve's involvement in training the people at Thyme. John Pinner, Managing Director of Thyme Software: At Thyme we have great plans for expanding the repertoire of the Linux Emporium, adding appropriate hardware and applications to its list offerings, plus a lot of other great stuff besides, to build on its role as the one-stop buy-on-line shop for everything Linux."
New Books
IBM Press Publishes "Apache Derby--Off to the Races"
IBM Press has published the book Apache Derby--Off to the Races by Paul Zikopoulos, Dan Scott, and George Baklarz.Create Websites that Draw Traffic--O'Reilly's Latest Release
O'Reilly has published the book Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald.Charles River Media publishes Digital Design From Gates to Intelligent Machines
Charles River Media has published the book Digital Design From Gates to Intelligent Machines by Bruce F. Katz.PHP in a Nutshell - O'Reilly's Newest Release
O'Reilly has published the book PHP in a Nutshell by Paul Hudson.Unix in a Nutshell, Fourth Edition - O'Reilly's Latest Release
O'Reilly has published the book Unix in a Nutshell, Fourth Edition by Arnold Robbins.No Starch Press releases "Wicked Cool Java"
No Starch Press has published the book Wicked Cool Java by Brian D. Eubanks.
Resources
Moodle Newsletter #1 is now available
The first edition of the Moodle Newsletter is available as a PDF download. Moodle is: "a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a 40,000-student University."
"Why OSS/FS? Look at the Numbers!" - updated
David A. Wheeler has announced an updated publication of his document Why OSS/FS? Look at the Numbers!. "The big change is that a much shorter, simpler version of the report is available as a presentation, in both PDF and OpenDocument formats. Currently only English is available, but the author hopes that many will translate it into a variety of languages."
Upcoming Events
Linux.Conf.Au Program Published
The conference program for Linux.Conf.Au is online. The event takes place in Dunedin, New Zealand on January 23-28, 2005.linux.conf.au 2006 Early bird registrations close soon
Early bird registrations for linux.conf.au 2006 are available until November 18. "Hi folks, Just a quick reminder that early bird registrations for linux.conf.au 2006 close in just over three days, at midnight on Friday the 18th of November. Please be aware that this date and time is in NZDT, which is currently equivalent to UTC +1300."
4th seminar of Medical Open Source Software Council in Japan (LinuxMedNews)
LinuxMedNews has an announcement for the fourth seminar of Medical Open Source Software Council in Japan. The event will take place in Kobayashi, Kyushu, Japan on November 26, 2005.PyCon 2006 Call for Tutorials
A Call for Tutorials has gone out for PyCon 2006. "Enjoy teaching classes or tutorials? PyCon 2006 is looking for proposals for a pre-conference tutorials day. PyCon 2006 will be held February 24-26 in Addison, Texas (near Dallas). Tutorials will be held on February 23, at the same location."
PyPy sprint announcement
The next PyPy sprint (Python-in-Python) has been announced. "The next PyPy sprint is scheduled to be in December 2005 in Gothenborg, Sweden. Its main focus is heading towards phase 2, which means JIT work, alternate threading models and logic programming (but there are also other possible topics). We'll give newcomer-friendly introductions."
Events: November 17, 2005 - January 12, 2006
| Date | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| November 17 - 18, 2005 | Embedded Technology 2005(ET2005) | Yokohama, Japan |
| November 17, 2005 | LinuxWorld Germany | Frankfurt, Germany |
| November 17 - 18, 2005 | SC|05 | (Washington State Convention and Trade Center)Seattle, WA |
| November 18, 2005 | European Gentoo developer meeting | Schloss Kransberg, Germany |
| November 20 - 23, 2005 | 5tas Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre | Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina |
| November 29 - December 2, 2005 | FOSS.IN/2005 | (Bangalore Palace)Bangalore, India |
| December 4 - 9, 2005 | Large Installation System Administration Conf.(LISA) | San Diego, CA |
| December 5 - 7, 2005 | Open Source Developers' Conference(OSDC) | (Monash University's Caulfield campus)Melbourne, Australia |
| December 10 - 14, 2005 | ApacheCon 2005 | (Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina)San Diego, CA |
| December 27 - 30, 2005 | 22nd Chaos Communication Congress | Berlin, Germany |
Event Reports
Linux news from SC2005
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Silicon Graphics (SGI) have announced that an open-source version of the SGI SpeedShop performance analysis tool is now available to developers.HPCwire Publisher Tom Tabor presented four 2005 HPCwire Innovation Awards to SGI's Graphics Prism.
Penguin Computing has released the Penguin Application-Ready Cluster Portfolio, a new line of integrated hardware/software Linux-based cluster systems.
Platform Computing has announced that Platform Rocks Standard Edition (SE) will be available as a cluster management solution for the HP Cluster Platform 3000.
PathScale has announced the release of version 1.1 of its InfiniPath software. This latest InfiniPath software release fully supports the OpenIB Gen 2 software stack and is designed to maximize application scaling and performance on InfiniBand-based Linux clusters.
Gelato Spotlights Linux Itanium at Brazil Meeting
The Gelato Federation has published a press release that covers a recent Gelato Federation meeting. "Ninety scientists, developers, and engineers convened from all around the globe for the October 2005 meeting of the Gelato Federation, an international technical organization dedicated to advancing Linux on the Intel® Itanium® processor. In attendance were delegates from more than 25 research and enterprise institutions, including Gelato members and sponsors, HP, Intel, and SGI. The event was hosted by the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) at their campus in Porto Alegre, Brazil."
Web sites
OSDL launches patent commons reference library
OSDL has announced the creation of an online "patent commons reference library," found at patentcommons.org. "The Patent Commons website will catalogue existing patent commitments from companies and individuals who wish to retain ownership of their patents, and will provide information about different types of pledges and covenants and how they work. In the coming months, the site will expand to include other legal solutions that benefit the open source community, including open source licenses, indemnification programs and information for organizations and individuals who wish to contribute to the commons."
Miscellaneous
Today's fun patent: space drive
For the sheer fun of it: if you were thinking of heading off to the stars, be careful you don't infringe on patent #6,960,975, being for a "space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state." "A cooled hollow superconductive shield is energized by an electromagnetic field resulting in the quantized vortices of lattice ions projecting a gravitomagnetic field that forms a spacetime curvature anomaly outside the space vehicle. The spacetime curvature imbalance, the spacetime curvature being the same as gravity, provides for the space vehicle's propulsion."
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