Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Have you ever peeked into one of those bazillion .el files in your Emacs installation's lisp folder and wondered what it meant? Or have you ever looked at a GIMP script .scm file and scratched your head over all the parentheses? Lisp is one of the oldest programming languages still in common use, and Scheme is a streamlined dialect of Lisp. Many universities use Scheme as the language to introduce students to the Computer Science curriculum, and some of their teaching methods are based on the assumption that Scheme is the one language they can count on their students knowing.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was formed almost ten years ago to safeguard the "Open Source" name. Over the years it has approved licenses and attempted some other activities while, generally, having little relevance to the wider community. It has often been seen as a relatively closed and non-democratic organization. Now one of OSI's founders is trying to get back into the organization and change its direction; the outcome of the resulting discussion may (or may not) change the direction of the OSI.

Any of the ISO and IEC national bodies can lodge a formal appeal over the next two months, before the Office Open XML standard is published. Criticism and calls for an investigation have come close on the heels of the formal announcement that Microsoft's Office Open XML file formats had received the necessary number of votes for approval as an ISO/IEC international standard.

The late Charles M. Schulz, the genius behind Peanuts, could make a much more telling comment on human foibles through one of his cartoon strips than many a writer can in 1000 words. One of my favourites is the one where Lucy is attempting to persuade Charlie Brown to kick the pigskin while she holds it down. From the conversation one is able to gauge that she has done this numerous times and always pulled the ball away at the last minute, so that Charlie Brown lands flat on his back.

Linux has succeeded as a product only because the community that supports it has organised itself systematically to create, share, test, reject, and develop ideas in a way that flouts conventional wisdom. Successful We-Think projects are based on five key principles that were all present in Linux. Earlier I introduced three principles; here are the final two.

The third bugfix release of the KDE 4.0 series is available. KDE 4.0 is mainly targeted at users who live on the bleeding edge. As a dot-oh release it might have its rough edges. The KDE Community releases a service update for this series once a month to make those bleeding edge users' lives easier. The changelog for KDE 4.0.3 is, although not complete, quite impressive. Especially KHTML and with it the Konqueror webbrowser have seen great improvements in both, stability and performance.

The good news is that Linux has been remarkably successful at the low end of PCs, the new UMPC (Ultramobile PCs) like Asus' Eee line and Everex's CloudBook. Better still, Intel's new Atom processors were made specifically to power UMPCs and Intel's cross between a smart phone and a UMPC, the MID (Mobile Internet Device).

LXer Feature: 3-Apr-2008

This tutorial is a guideline on making your own letterhead on Open Office. Although there are letterhead templates in the wild, you may have a design in mind that you can only put together yourself. This should give you enough background information to do this on your own. Depending on how much glitter you want on it, it may take some artistic skill - sorry, I cannot impart that in this document. :)

Readers of the KDE Commit-Digest have probably noticed that Gilles Caulier is again on top with number of commits. On what does he work so furiously? Gilles is the main developer of Digikam which is under transition from KDE 3 to KDE 4 whilst simultaneously adding new features. Read more to know more about the future of advanced digital photo management for KDE and Linux.

While most basic hardware support for GNU/Linux is improving constantly, wireless support remains dismal. Few manufacturers make an effort to support the operating system, or to publicize what support they have. Moreover, the components of wireless devices change so fast that one version of a device may offer support while a second version doesn't -- even though both versions share the same model number. And if, in addition to functionality, you also want a device with free drivers and no reliance on proprietary firmware, your choices are even more limited. Fortunately, no matter what your preferences, online resources exist to help you find the card that's right for you or get your existing wireless network adapter to work with Linux.

Some people are still under the delusion that Linux is written by unwashed hackers living in their parents' basements whose only social life is playing D&D and having flame wars over IRC (Internet Relay Chat) about whether vi or EMACS better and debating Picard versus Kirk. Nothing, nothing could be further from the truth.

As many of you may know, the SCALE chairs have been organizing SCALE for 6 years now. We are delighted with how the show has grown and have enjoyed the countless hours that have gone into the planning and execution of the event. That effort has resulted in SCALE becoming the premier grassroots Open Source software show.

HOAXVILLE, USA -- In a stunning and unexpected announcement, Tim O'Really, founder of O'Really Publishing and the O'Really Network, announced today that "Web 2.0 is history, not that anyone ever really understood what it meant, anyway. In its place we offer Web 3.14159265358979323846…" O'Really said he expects to hold numerous Web 3.14159265358979323846… conferences that will "bring together a diverse crowd of lonely geeks with too much time on their hands, gullible investors, and marketing people looking for new buzzwords they can use in their PowerPoint presentations."

Microsoft beware, Apple is set to launch an assault on the world's biggest computer marketplace with plans to release a version of its new Leopard operating system for PCs. According to Apple insiders, the launch is set for sometime in Q3 of this year and a select group of Apple beta testers are reporting stunning results running Leopard across a range of OEM PC hardware.

Contributors to Spring devising and developing extensions to the open source framework will soon get dedicated help from project leaders through a new community site. Spring leaders, though, will maintain a high commitment threshold for those contributing to the core Spring Framework itself.

Adobe Systems is to join the Linux Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to fostering growth of the open source operating system.

High definition HTML is coming to a site near you -- whether you will see it is another matter. An addition to the HTML5 working draft specification was approved by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) working group over the weekend, including several new HTML elements and attributes designed to support output on high definition displays. But due to patent protection, open source Web browsers may not be allowed to implement a significant portion of the standard.

The LiMo Foundation released the first full version of its platform on Monday, as it welcomed a major new member on board. Chipmaker Texas Instruments (TI) will be joining its main rival ARM in LiMo, the largest mobile Linux consortium. TI, however, is joining at the "core member" level--a superior position to the "associate member" status enjoyed by ARM.

This week saw the International Standards Organisation vote on adopting Office Open XML as a standard for office documents. KDE gained a representative late last year through our legal body KDE e.V. realising that the only way to ensure a fair process was to be part of it. Today our delegate voted yes to adopting the format as an international standard. "We have studied the standard hard and many changes have been made to it," said KDE's Supreme Leader Aaron Seigo "and following a $10,000 donation from an anonymous North American source we realised the market should decide the best formats to use, not technical bureaucrats".

[April Fools! - Scott]

Linux has succeeded as a product only because the community that supports it has organised itself systematically to create, share, test, reject, and develop ideas in a way that flouts conventional wisdom. Successful We-Think projects are based on five key principles that were all present in Linux. Here are the first two.