Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
After Debian's epic SSL blunder, a world of hurt for security pros (Register)
Here's an article in The Register on the aftermath of the Debian openssl vulnerability. "Among the weak SSL certificates at time of publication is this one belonging to Whitehouse.gov. It's of little consequence, since the site doesn't conduct secure transactions, but it does show the ubiquity of the problem. The key is owned by content delivery provider Akamai Technologies and is used by about 20,000 websites. Akamai is in the process of replacing it."
Trade Shows and Conferences
KDE at the Libre Graphics Meeting 2008 (KDE.News)
KDE.News has an account from the Libre Graphics Meeting. "The Libre Graphics Meeting brings together developers of free graphics software in the widest sense of the word as well as the users: artists, photographers, designers and publishers. Whether you are interested in fonts, photography, panoramas, digital art, mathematics, colour theory, vector libraries, applications, file formats, interoperability, user interaction, typesetting, text layouting, 3D modeling or animation, or all of those, the Libre Graphics Meeting is the meeting to attend. This year's program had a particularly good mix of introductory and in-depth presentations. No topic was left unexplored, and the great thing is: everyone was talking to everyone and came home with new ideas, new initiatives for cross-project cooperation and integration."
YAPC::Russia (use Perl)
use Perl covers the recent YAPC::Russia conference. "I asked in a mailing list of Moscow.pm if someone could help to find a venue of amphitheatre style. In a couple of "peer-to-peer" steps we met with a guy from the Club "Business in .RU-style" which is a part of State University-Higher School of Economics. They proposed us to take one of the auditoriums of such type. Later I asked for one more auditorium to host a second thread of talks."
Companies
Wind River, Intel partner on 'infotainment' platform (East Bay Business Times)
East Bay Business Times covers a partnership between Wind River and Intel. "Alameda's Wind River (NASDAQ: WIND) will create a standard automotive Linux operating system for the partnership, which will run on Santa Clara-based Intel's low-power Centrino Atom processor. "We see automotive as a forerunner, sitting in front of related marketplaces, like mobile handsets, mobile Internet devices, medical devices, gaming systems and mobile entertainment systems," said John Bruggeman, Wind River's chief marketing officer. The Wind River Linux Platform for Infotainment will be available in August 2008."
Linux Adoption
Linux opens London's Oyster (ZDNet)
ZDNet reports on a move from proprietary software to Apache and Linux by the London subway system. "The Oyster contactless card system, which handles payments for travel on London's buses and Tube system, suffered from lock-in to proprietary systems, which hindered developments to the online payment systems, said Michael Robinson, a senior consultant with Deloitte, at the Open Source Forum event in London. "The hosting was on a proprietary system, centred on one application," he said. "It demanded certain hardware, and was locked into one design of infrastructure.""
Legal
Copyright deal could toughen rules governing info on iPods, computers (Vancouver Sun)
The Vancouver Sun covers a proposed trade agreement which would take the copyright battles to a new level. "The deal would create a international regulator that could turn border guards and other public security personnel into copyright police. The security officials would be charged with checking laptops, iPods and even cellular phones for content that 'infringes' on copyright laws, such as ripped CDs and movies. The guards would also be responsible for determining what is infringing content and what is not." (From BoingBoing).
Interviews
Linux is a platform for people, not just specialists (Guardian)
Glyn Moody interviews Mark Shuttleworth for the Guardian. How close, he asks, is Canonical to breaking even? "Not close. It will require time and ongoing investment. We've positioned ourselves for what we see as the future of software - unlicensed software, people having access to the software that they want at the time that they want it. The service ecosystem around that software will fund it. And if we are the company that has best anticipated that future, then we will be best positioned to benefit from it."
Reviews
OLPC 2.0: towards the US$75 laptop (apc)
apc reports on the second generation OLPC laptop, which replaces the keyboard with a touch screen. "Even before todays crop of $500-$800 mini-notebooks became the New Cool Thing, MITs vision for a low-cost Linux-powered laptop for the third world was reaching for a price point as low as US$100. It never got there, of course the product that evolved into the XO-1 sub-note sells for US$188. Even so, its notched up some 600,000 sales to date. Now MIT has its sights on a next-gen XO machine, dubbed XO-2, which it hopes will embrace new technologies while also bringing the price down to US$75 by the time the model is ready in 2010."
Red Hat, Novell SUSE Linux Get Upgrades (InformationWeek)
InformationWeek takes a look at the recent updates to both Red Hat and Novell Enterprise Linux products. "Both Red Hat and Novell says the upgrades cover things like virtualization, management, hardware support, and security."
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