Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Paylocity provides payroll and human resources outsourcing services for companies that don't want the burden of performing those functions in house. Launched in 1997, is is the brainchild of founder Steve Sarowitz, who was previously a salesperson for other payroll companies. "My accountant said I might want to stop making other people rich and do it myself," Sarowitz says. Paylocity was birthed strictly with a Microsoft infrastructure, but over the last six years, open source has made some inroads on the shop floor.

iTALC, or Intelligent Teaching and Learning with Computers, is a didactical tool designed to assist teachers. Despite its name, the tool itself isn't a learning environment. It's meant to let teachers control their students' computers in a computer-driven classroom setting. Thanks to its powerful remote desktop control features, simple setup, and lack of cost, it's a potential remote assistance tool for any type of network.

"A change after 2.6.24 broke ndiswrapper by accidentally removing its access to GPL-only symbols," noted Pavel Roskin, offering a patch to address the issue. Linux creator Linus Torvalds was unimpressed, "I'm not seeing why ndiswrapper should be treated separately. If it loads non-GPL modules, it shouldn't be able to use GPLONLY symbols." The NDISwrapper project page explains, "many vendors do not release specifications of the hardware or provide a Linux driver for their wireless network cards. This project implements Windows kernel API and NDIS (Network Driver Interface Specification) API within Linux kernel. A Windows driver for wireless network card is then linked to this implementation so that the driver runs natively, as though it is in Windows, without binary emulation."

Open-source software can save an organization money and open the door to customization, but it pays to know where to start and where to get help. When considering which software applications to buy, more and more midsize companies are considering open source—low-cost or free software whose source code can be modified by users or developers. Open-source software holds great appeal for these companies; not only is it generally much less expensive, but it is often more flexible, reliable, robust and customizable.

This week we'll look at what's been going on recently with LinuxSampler, a very cool software audio sampler. I have to say at the outset that this article was tough to write, I was just having far too much fun with the program.

For January and February, we chose some of the staples of open source security (GnuPG and Nmap) as the tool of the month. And deservedly so; both have just celebrated their ten-year anniversary in the open source realm, a rare feat for any open source project, much less one founded on security. But for the month of March, we wanted to move ahead and change gears. This month's Open Source Tool is no newbie for sure, but we bet that most of you reading haven't heard of it. While most Linux security tools deal with digital security, this month's tool is one of the few to cross that divide;

As the new leaves of spring bud in the Low Countries, the organisation of Akademy is also growing. This will bear fruit in August as the worldwide KDE community gathers in Sint-Katelijne-Waver, Belgium at the De Nayer Institute to celebrate and consider the post-KDE 4.0 world. Now that the KDE 4 technology platform is in place, this year's Akademy will focus on bringing the pillars of KDE to applications, research efforts around KDE, and work on non-traditional platforms for the desktop.

Inside BashStyle-NG, a strong idea struggles to be born. On one hand, if you use the bash shell at all, you will likely find several of BashStyle-NG's customization options worth trying -- all the more so because they are only a few mouse clicks away. On the other, a poorly designed interface makes using the program a matter of guesswork, despite the fact that the latest release is supposedly the third release candidate for version 5.0.

Ubuntu fans will be pleased to hear that issue 10 of Full Circle, the Ubuntu community magazine has been released. Highlights in this issue include an easy guide to installing Linux Mint, tips on compiling from source code, creating your own server and ripping a DVD with Acidrip. But the one you don’t want to miss is Ronnie Tucker’s review of the ultra-small Asus EEE PC.

For a number of years now Tectonic has hosted a list of open source and Linux usergroups based in Africa. Usergroups are, after all, the lifeblood of free and open source software and the fact that the number of groups was always growing was good news for free software in Africa. But lately the list of active groups appears to be dwindling. So where have all the usergroups gone?

If you like your browser interface to be simple, try these extensions designed to unclutter Firefox. Compact Menu 2 and two alternative extensions collapses all the menus into a single drop-down button, creating room for you to add buttons such as Downloads, History, and Bookmarks to the menu bar. Organize Status Bar lets you rearrange all the items displayed on your status bar, or even hide some.

The popular open source content management system Drupal is going commercial, reports InternetNews. A new company called Acquia, which is led by Drupal founder Dries Buytaert, plans to offer a commercial version of the content management system based on the free version but with a host of additional modules.

LXer Feature: 2-Mar-2008

In this week's LXer Roundup, speed up your Linux with Preload, KDE 4: Wow Factor Fully Engaged, learn 10 good UNIX usage habits, Richard Stallman steps back from Emacs, Best Buy Sells Linux, several articles concerning Microsoft plus audio conversion tools and Improve Security with PAM.

The Mandriva development team yesterday announced the first release candidate for Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. Codenamed Serapias, this release includes all-new artwork, improvements to the software management tools, WPA-EAP support in the network configuration tools and the latest pre-release of OpenOffice.org 2.4

Just as it seemed the SCO saga was drawing to a close, a new player, with up to $100 million to risk, has come on the scene. Stephen Norris Capital Partners (SNCP) has made an offer to take SCO private while providing a line of credit to allow the company to continue its operations. If the bankruptcy court in Delaware agrees to the plan—which is not a foregone conclusion—SCO and its various legal cases could be with us for a long time to come.

You can't blame these guys for trying to milk the Eee PC, and Asus is doing just that with its new smorgasboard of Eee PC accessories.

Four months after being announced, the End Software Patents project (ESP) is launching a new Web site with arguments for economists, computer scientists, lawyers, and lay peoplemen about why they should support the project. Prominent on the site is the publication of a report on the state of patents in the United States during 2006-07, and a scholarship contest that will award $10,000 for "for the best paper on the effects of the patentability of software and business methods under US law."

Com One's Phoenix Wi-Fi radio is a home music appliance built on an embedded Linux foundation. Phoenix lets you stream music or play podcasts as easily as you can listen to a car radio, once you tell it what you want to hear. Its ability to play Internet radio is nice -- but is it worth its price? The radio is attractive enough in a shiny white plastic kind of way. It's smaller than a boom box -- about the size of three transistor radios (remember them?) side by side. The main controls include a five-way circular control pad and a knob that changes the music volume and moves through device settings during setup.

After a slow start, add-ons for OpenOffice.org are finally starting to reach a critical mass. When I last wrote about add-ons for OpenOffice.org in September 2004, the examples were relatively limited, with extendedPDF the outstanding example. Today, extendedPDF remains a must-have -- so much so that Debian versions of OpenOffice.org include it as part of the basic packages -- but the choices have expanded dramatically. There is even a web page that is slowly beginning to rival the Firefox extension page.

An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) will allow your computer to continue to function for a period of time when mains power is lost. This can help you to smooth over short-term (1-5 minute) loss of power by running from the UPS battery. When the UPS battery is running low, the UPS can signal your computer to shut down cleanly. With a UPS you can avoid lengthly filesystem or RAID checks due to abrupt power loss. Here are some tips on UPSes in general and how to set one up to protect a Linux machine, even if the model you have lacks explicit Linux support.