Showing headlines posted by grouch

An enterprising young computer scientist in Belgium has come up with a new twist on the old help desk. Instead of the tedium of step-by-step instructions over the phone or through instant messaging, tech support people can now show clients how to solve their computer problems using Bram Biesbrouck's ScreenKast software and captorials.com to create and share screen capture videos.

The Fedora Usability project aims to provide coherence, accessibility and intuivity for all people using Fedora Core and its associated resources. Fedora must be easy and making things simple and coherent for a pleasant use is my objectif with this project.

Open-source software is advancing in UK education, with more than three-quarters of colleges and universities considering this model when making IT decisions.

How - and when - to use objects in PHP to save you time down the line. A quick guide to POOP.

Warning to Linux users who want to upgrade to socket AM2 motherboards: You will almost definitely run into problems with Linux. I have an ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard. I upgraded the BIOS to the latest version, and that broke IO-APIC on all versions of the Linux kernel I've tried, including 2.6.17.7. I couldn't boot Linux without the"noapic" boot parameter. I solved this problem by restoring an older BIOS, and I lost a fancy NVidia acceleration feature in the process. That's no big deal for me because the feature primarily benefits Windows games and I don't play Windows games often enough to care.

A scripting language for developing dynamic web applications (Part 1)Tutorial A PHP: Hypertext Processor (PHP) script may be embedded in an HTML page; or run as a.php script in a web server such as Apache web server. PHP statements are included in<?php ?> tags.

Debian GNU/Linux users can now use OpenVZ virtualisation software with their favourite distribution after the OpenVZ team revised its licensing terms to comply with the Debian guidelines.

Sometimes you might have a need to make an image file consisting mostly of text -- to use as a banner on a Web page, for instance. You can always make the banner in an image editor, but there's a much quicker way -- one that lends itself to automatic generation from scripts using arbitrary text.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Support for PostScript page deletion and editing of metadata in KViewShell, and for using a SQL backend with KPhotoAlbum (feature derived from KexiDB). Strigi gets support for inotify. Plasmagik, an application to assist developers in making "Plasmoids" (Plasma applets), is imported into KDE SVN. Rendering development work continues in the Unity web rendering engine. Work stars on a "Magnetic Outline Selection" tool for Krita.

Fifteen years after the introduction of the Linux kernel, next week's LinuxWorld conference will focus not on whether to use open source software - the market has answered that question - but on how to deploy, secure and manage the technology as part of a business IT operation.

Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Code Listing 3.1
# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-lang/pike-7.6.86"

More than three quarters of all UK colleges and universities consider open source options when engaging in IT procurement exercises, says a report published today.

[Be sure to follow the link to the survey itself and at least read the "Executive Summary". -- grouch]

The responses indicate that, saving on the total cost of ownership is, for desktops as for servers, the most important reason to use OSS on desktops. This was also indicated as the most important reason in the 2003 survey. Being locked in was not mentioned as an issue in 2003, but in 2006 the majority (73%) indicated that they chose OSS for that reason either on their desktops or on their servers or on both. Ideology is not an important factor for respondents, although a third of them indicated that it played a role.
-- from OSS Watch Survey 2006: Executive Summary

Shiira, if you haven't been following the coverage as of late, is an open source and uniquely feature-packed browser based on WebKit, the same web (and also open source) rendering engine that powers Apple's own Safari.

Firefox has been out for quite some time now, and we are lovin it (no no, it's not a burger.) Yeah, so for the I-don't-know-nothin-about-Firefox lot, here it is: Firefox is an open source browser project from Mozilla, something similar to Linux wherein Linux is an OS while Firefox is an Internet Browser. There have been many versions released of the browser but the 1.5 version stands out the most. Now Mozilla is trying to further enhance the stability of the browser while improving on the usability as well. The second-coming of the most downloaded browser of all time, Firefox version 2.0 final, will soon be released to create another milestone of maximum downloads.

Under the GTS, unemployed degree and diploma holders are given the opportunity to pursue 13 different courses ranging from English and graduate development courses to professional certification in Linux, Microsoft and Cisco applications.

I've been a big fan of Firefox since practically the beginning, back when it was called Phoenix or Firebird. I like the way Firefox does things. It's feature rich and the UI is well thought out. Sadly, lately, for me Firefox has become unusable.

As in the PC world, Linux is emerging in the mobile industry as the chief check on the power of the Microsoft platforms, but until now handset Linux has been fragmented and inadequate and the Nokia-dominated Symbian has been the most successful operating system for high-end phones.

[There is some confusion as to the author of this article. In the heading it shows, "by Peter Branton", but at the end of the article it says, "The author is Caroline Gabriel, Experture Expercycle Analyst, Experton Group"]

[Strange. Commentary from some U.S. citizens might lead one to believe that GNU/Linux is not the "chief check" on MS power in "the PC world", due to mysterious, non-specific fear and uncertainty about device support. Perhaps the author analyzed facts in that area, as well as in the current article, to arrive at such a conclusion. The author certainly makes a very credible analysis of the global power struggles among mobile phone makers, in which Linux plays a significant role, based on events in recent news. -- grouch]

This talk was on converting a really large (over 3 terabytes, largest table is 1.8 billion rows) data warehouse database from Oracle 8i to PostgreSQL. The reason for the conversion was to save in licensing costs. They wanted to move their Oracle licenses over from the data warehouse DB to use them on the online transaction processing (OLTP) system.

Most companies think they are prepared for disaster by backing up critical data, which they can quickly restore if a loss occurs. Few companies, however, are prepared for a catastrophe-total system failure-in which they lose all their data as well as the entire operating system, applications, settings, patches and more, reducing their system to "bare metal" and experiencing costly downtime.

In retrospect, it was probably a mistake to arrive at DEFCON 14 early Friday morning in hopes of avoiding some of the crowd at registration. Nonetheless, in spite of several spurts, sputters, and delays, it is now safe to say that the occasionally ordered chaos that is DEFCON 14, the largest hacker's conference in the world, is off and running.