Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

KDE 4 is a radical overhaul of the popular desktop. It offers broad improvements like the Oxygen desktop theme, SVG graphics, and enhanced speeds thanks to the latest version of the Qt 4 toolkit. It also offers specific improvements such as the font manager and the Dolphin file manager. In short, there's a lot to like.

A small group of individuals and some small, specialized companies [see CalCars poster in right hand column] have been gaining increasing public visibility in their push to entice major auto manufacturers to begin producing plug-in hybrid electric vehicles [PHEV]. More recently some very large corporate entities have joined the chorus, Southern California Edison will be using Ford Escape vehicles and even PE&G will see power sold back from one Google test fleet vehicles. In contrast, the major automobile manufactures stumbled unintentionally into the spot light.

Smart cards and digital signatures are presented as among the most important components of e-government in Europe, but they are still far from being an effective, Linux-friendly solution to reduce administrative and business costs. But the same tools may become a way to make the general public use or support Free Software.

Many people know that free and open source software (FOSS) plays a role in creating the technical infrastructure of developing nations and in preserving endangered languages. With the Orca screen reader, FOSS takes on the new role of providing access to computers and the Internet to people with disabilities. The project is quickly catching up with proprietary accessibility options, and is already being widely deployed as a low-cost alternative.

MegaLap, a notebook computer from ZaReason, a company that builds and sells computer systems that run Ubuntu, is bound to give its owner bragging rights at any LAN party, especially with how loud the system can get. It has the hallmarks of on-the-go computing, while performing comparably to a desktop gaming system.

Ever since Sun anteed up a billion in cold cash for MySQL a couple months back, we wondered when the next shoe would drop. Recently, EnterpriseDB announced that IBM was one of several venture backers to fund its third $10m round of financing. At first glance, this appears to be IBM's response to Sun. But it isn't.

In a few years' time, almost all businesses will use open source, according to Gartner; even though IT managers may be unaware of it, and prefer to talk about fashions such as software as a service. Open source promoters have welcomed the endorsement by what is seen as a conservative commentator, but predict the changes will go further than Gartner assumes.

Some days, like it or not, you need a lawyer. For most business purposes, picking the right law firm isn't usually that big of a deal. Chances are you already have at least an idea of how to find a contract lawyer, a tax law specialist or a real-estate attorney. But what if your programmers are using open-source code that's licensed under two different licenses? What if you're concerned with how a patent might affect open-source software your company is already using? Or let's say a company based in Utah decides that you've put its proprietary code into Linux, who do you turn to then? Now, what should you be looking for in a law firm?

LXer Feature: 06-Apr-2008

In this week's Roundup we have all kinds of ISO and Microsoft related articles like Microsoft's Great Besmirching, OpenXML ISO approved and Microsoft's new weapon against open source: stupidity, amongst others. Also we have So why don't I run Linux?, Time is right for Linux PCs to emerge, Linux's Impact: The Return of XP and we have a tutorial written by Thomas King on how set up a letterhead in OpenOffice. With April fools just having passed I decided not to have a FUD section this week, it would have been just a little too much fun.

Computing is fun! Well at least thats until Microsoft drove it out of the equation. I mean with Windows everything is just bland, monotonous, and just ordinary. Even it’s name is such a snooze-fest! The whole idea of window computing by no mean exclusive to Microsoft, it has been around for quite some time, one could argue that it isn’t that “earth shattering” of an invention. So why name your flagship product after a technology that’s not yours and has been around for quite sometime? Beats me!

Each year it seems that there are more and more grumblings about how commercial Open Source conferences are moving further and further away from Free Software and Open Source communities. Incongruously, some of the loudest (or at least most noticed) complaining comes from some of the most consistent participants on the conference circuit. I myself have joined in the guilty pleasure of kvetching about how this year's iteration of a given conference just doesn't have the same soul as some previous year.

Chinese authorities appeared to have lifted a block on the English-language version of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, but politically sensitive topics such as Tibet and Tiananmen Square are still off limits. Internet users in Beijing and Shanghai confirmed today they could access the English-language version of one of the world's most popular websites, but the Chinese language version was still restricted.

Thanks to the use of the MadWifi modules by the Linux kernel, it is possible to implement a Wireless Access Point with a Personal Computer or an Embedded Device that has a WiFi network card (PCI or MiniPCI) with an Atheros chipset. This feature is available starting with version 1.0.beta8 of Zeroshell, which introduces WiFi support in either AP (Access Point) or STA mode (in which a Zeroshell router/bridge can be associated as a client in a Wireless LAN).

There are many great FOSS projects that utilise old PC hardware and give it a new lease of life. The best is desktop computing with various Linux distribution flavours like Mint, PCLinux, Ubuntu and countless others. In fact it is my considered belief that the best hardware to run Linux on is infact (almost) any machine that is at least 12 months old. It is possible, of course, to select components based on the degree (and maturity) of the specific support under Linux but this has two major drawbacks.

Linux is great to use at home. It can be handy at work. It's a great server operating system. But there's one other place that Linux is really worth its weight in gold: public, or semi-public, computers. There's nothing quite as nerve-wracking as seeing someone on a computer you're responsible for, and wondering what exactly they're up to. Except for maybe seeing someone you're responsible for on a computer, and wondering the same thing.

Free/Iliad is a French Internet provider with a whooping €1B in revenues. Its founder Xavier Niel boasts being a very profitable business with all salaries representing only a few percents of Free’s revenues: a performance that might be better explained by the amount of open source leveraged by their massive infrastructure.

Linux might benefit from a changing conception of what computers are for. With the rise of Web-based applications that reduce the need for desktop-bound software, more of the action comes through an Internet browser now. The feel of the underlying operating system is less important.

"I skipped the public announcements for versions 5 and 6, but here is 7 :)," noted Vegard Nossum, announcing the latest release of his kmemcheck patch, currently applying against the 2.6.25-rc8 kernel. Vegard noted he is now hoping to get the patch merged into the mainline kernel during the upcoming 2.6.26 merge window.

Last week Weekly Wire sent Roblimo to San Francisco for the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC). While there, he had a chance to talk briefly with Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth even though Mark was getting full "rock star" treatment from an adoring crowd and was totally mobbed by press and fans whenever he showed his face.

Altimeters... lie. For those of you who are a bit uneasy about flying, this bit of news may not make you feel any better. Nor will this piece of information: most analog instruments on airplanes are prone to quite a bit of error. Yet for over a hundred years, these instruments were more than enough to get most aircraft safely from place to place.