Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

Audacity, the free and open-source audio editor (also available for Windows and Linux) is in need of some Mac-love. Whilst Mac OS X users can get themselves either the stable v1.2.6 release or a 1.3.3 beta version, development going forward is a little uncertain at the moment. According to the Audacity forum, there are no active developers on the project with Macs, and the latest beta (v1.3.4) is not going to appear on the Mac platform until "someone [with a Mac] volunteers to compile it, and sort the remaining bugs out." Yikes!

It must have passed beneath my radar it when it first was filed in 2004, but it caught my eye recently when Andy Updegrove mentioned it in Chapter 3 of his book-in-progress, The War of the Words. I'm talking about Novell's November 2004 antitrust complaint against Microsoft, filed shortly after settling an different, OS-related, complaint with Microsoft for $536 million. What is interesting to me, and why this "old news" is worth talking about, is the analysis Novell made in their complaint of Microsoft's treatment of document format standards. The concerns of 2004 (or 1995 even) are very similar to the concerns of 2007. Let's go through Novell's argument and see where it leads us.

Prof. Christian Kurtsiefer, Prof. Antia Lamas and others from the Quantum Information Technology Lab have been at the 24C3, giving a lecture on Quantum Cryptography and Possible Attacks (Video), and demonstrating the hardware of a full working kit developed in the National University of Singapore for entanglement based QKD over a free space channel.

Like a lot of companies, Farpoint Group closes between Christmas and New Years. Traditionally, the end-of-the-year shutdown has been spent re-building the network, installing new equipment, etc., which is always wonderful therapy for techies everywhere, despite the bad language sometimes involved. The big project, though, was re-thinking our overall computing philosophy. So, anyway, I loaded up the Ubuntu LINUX distribution, and I am so impressed I can't express how impressed I am.

As of February 1, 2008 Netscape Navigator will no longer be; no more support will be available for Netscape Navigator and no new releases of the browser will become available. While most of us no longer use Netscape Navigator it is still a sad day that reminds of how an innovative company and project fell prey to the muscle of software giant Microsoft.

"New year, new kernel: Linux 2.4.36 is finally ready and has been checked long enough to be released. Quite a bunch of bugs, build errors and security issues have been fixed since 2.4.35, but all of those fixes were merged into 2.4.35-stable," 2.4 maintainer Willy Tarreau stated, announcing the latest 2.4 stable Linux kernel. He noted, "I should say that I'm quite satisfied of this dual-branch release model which proves to be very successful at separating quick fixes from changes which require more thorough testing."

We learned a lot in 2007, and we hope you did too! Here’s a list of the top 10 most popular articles of the year.

There's little question that open source software -- and the open source philosophy -- has made giant strides in 2007. As tempting as it can be to just look back and feel good about our progress, it's the right time for the community to take a long look forward and figure out what needs to be done to continue -- and even accelerate -- momentum. To get the conversation started, I've compiled a list of five suggested "to-do" items for open source in 2008. Some of the items are evangelical; some are introspective. All of these things garnered at least some notice in 2007 and are bound to remain at least as important or gain that much more attention in '08. It's not an exhaustive list and isn't intended to be one; it's simply meant to spark further thought.

About a week ago, Joe Barr posted a feature on Linux.com titled "New Alien Arena 6.10 blows away its FPS competition" yet gave no real comparisons with other similar games, regretable since his conclusion was that it "blows away its competition". This was done in the same style as Barr's previous feature, "Tremulous: The best free software game ever?" which described Tremulous but also lacked comparisons and relations to other games. This feature hopes to be a thorough comparison of the major free software shooters.

This is not the usual Linux/Mac fanboy “Microsoft is Dead, Long Live [insert OS of choice here]” rant. Microsoft is a multikajillion (yes, I am a math teacher) dollar giant and it isn’t going anywhere any time soon. However, I think it has some pretty significant obstacles ahead of it in the Ed Tech market which just might have a ripple effect in the years to come. It’s been noted before that I should alert readers to my pro-open source biases, so here you go: I am biased towards open source solutions for education wherever they make practical, financial, technical, and pedagogical sense. You have been warned.

I've spent the better part of the past 2 weeks banging away on 2 LTSP servers for our school district. I find myself lamenting to those around me, and being an otherwise cranky guy as well. This morning it dawned on me that people probably think I'm having such a hard time because I'm using Linux instead of the "norm" -- but that's just not the case.

The following guide allows you to wirelessy sync an iPhone with Amarok in Ubuntu 7.10, including adding, editing and playing songs and playlists. It takes less than 10 minutes, and is almost completely graphical, with only 3 Terminal commands for initial set up. Per a lot of my other writing, I’ve added it to the Ubuntu wiki. The guide below is just for iPhone users running Amarok, see help.ubuntu.com for iPhone Touch and gtkpod info. Naturally, it requires a jailbroken iPhone.

So I decided to try an experiment, and participated in the G1G1 (Give 1, Get 1) program from the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project. My 4 year-old is the original target market for the purchase, and I know from experience as the computer geek in the family, (and most of the extended family - sigh), that I would be the primary fount of knowledge for the users of our OLPC. One of the sections of this review will be about how to find out more about the laptop and interface.

TUSDEC has adopted open source software for its entire networking and communication to ensure the safe sharing and transfer of data. According to a spokesman of the company here Tuesday, TUSDEC is perhaps the first ever public sector institution in the country which has embraced the Linux-based software to avoid the problems like hacking and unauthorized sharing of information.

Marten Mickos sent me an update on MySQL's exceptional 2007. It makes interesting points about open source, generally, while relaying important information about MySQL. Here are excerpts from the message, with his permission

It is sometimes forgotten that GNU/Linux is more than just a desktop operating system. Linux, being a well-engineered kernel, is used extensively and also funded for its important role in several different areas of computing. One needs to look for evidence of growth not only in desktops. Judgment must be based on multiple areas where GNU/Linux gains traction. This ought to cover some disruptive trends that are yet to be reckoned with.

When you buy a new PC or a MAC you'll get a fully localized copy of Windows/MacOS in your language but what about Linux distributions? If Linux vendors want to penetrate the newbies market, they must provide fully localized ISO images, there are no excuses. This is my point of view.

The aim of the new 'xvmc' branch is to deprecate origin 'xvmc-i915' branch with lot of cleanups and new framework inside driver to add supports for more hardware media decode drivers in future. It also has changes that affect users. The most notable is that the origin libI915XvMC.so is replaced by a single libIntelXvMC.so entry to be used on different chipsets for different hardware decoders.

When you think of a new computer you want to buy, odds are that you set your sights on a new Windows or Mac system, but it may be a good time to consider a Linux machine. Recently, I’ve been using two very low-cost systems—one a desktop and one a notebook–that come loaded with Linux and nothing but free, open-source software. I wouldn’t recommend either of them as the sole system for a dedicated web worker, but the notebook in particular is worth considering for a number of purposes.

Open source has been predicted to be one of top IT business models to watch out for in 2008. According to Made Wiryana, Academician, Lecturer, and open source expert, disappointment in Windows Vista coupled with great responses and high expectation to low end machines that come bundled with the Linux operating system and the rising interest in green IT, has made many think positively about Linux.