Showing headlines posted by dcparris

Paula Hunter is an industry veteran who has an extensive background in Linux and open source. She was tapped in May of this year to lead the U.S. marketing efforts for Collax (www.collax.com), a Linux distribution aimed at addressing the needs of the small and medium business. Collax is set to expand on their European success in the U.S. this summer offering a solution that could rival more traditional offerings like Microsoft Small Business Server.

Linspire founder and entrepreneur extraordinaire Michael Robertson is at it again. No stranger to PR stunts, he's scooped out a big one this time. In the latest installment of his blog Michael's Minute, Robertson begs embattled Tour de France winner Floyd Landis to prove he's not a "cheater" by taking a polygraph test stating he did not take banned medication leading up to and during the Tour. To sweeten the pot, Robertson offers to pay Landis $100,000.

The Hard PartsI hate hardware. Sometimes I hate Linux too, but more often I just hate the hardware. Boxes, wires, connectors, keyboards, mice, the works. Some days I just want all of it to disappear.

Desktop migration specialist Versora on Aug. 8 released an updated version (v2.0) of its Progression Desktop Windows to Linux desktop migration software, a tool that helps users to transfer files and settings from their Windows system to a Linux system.

[And you can see our interview with Versora - dcparris]

"As an open, nonproprietary operating system, Linux provides flexibility, freedom of choice and a cost advantage that makes it compelling as a viable alternative to Windows Mobile, Symbian and other proprietary offerings," said analyst Stacey Quandt.

With the release of the 2.6.18-rc3-mm1 kernel, Andrew Morton [interview] included a brief note stating, "fwiw, I recently took a position with Google." He then linked to aLinux Today article which details the reasons behind his recent move. The article begins, "Andrew Morton has started working for a new company, but his day job as the Linux 2.6 kernel maintainer will remain exactly the same." In the article, Andrew discusses one of the reasons Google was a good fit, "in my position as kernel maintainer I feel that I should not be employed by a company which has a direct interest in the kernel.org kernel because this would put me in a position of making decisions which are commercially significant to my employer's competitors. As Google maintains their own kernel variant for internal use, their interests are largely decoupled from what happens in the kernel.org kernel."

Texas Instruments (TI) has published an 18-minute videocast about programming its DaVinci RISC/DSP chips using Green Hills Software's (GHS) "Multi" IDE (integrated development environment). Used with a hardware JTAG probe, Multi permits simultaneous OS-aware debugging of Linux and DSP BIOS executives running on the DaVinci chips, GHS says.

This article discusses the shared libraries concept in both Windows and Linux, and offers a walk-through through various data structures to explain how dynamic linking is done in these operating systems. The paper will be useful for developers interested in the security implications and the relative speed of dynamic linking, and assumes some prior cursory knowledge with dynamic linking.

[This should be interesting. - dcparris]

U.N. official urges governments to"seriously consider" the OpenDocument Format; applauds Microsoft's move to create ODF plug-in.

[Sunil] Abraham explained: "Most governments in this region are older than the software vendors that they are talking to, and they will almost certainly outlive the software vendors and developers. For government [document] archives, it is thus critical that [they] use open formats."

[I couldn't find a mention of any software implementing ODF except OpenOffice.org, in spite of efforts by KDE, Abiword, IBM and others. The article seems to be pulling some of the same stunts as Steven Titch. It includes commentary by the BSA in opposition to ODF and support of MS. -- grouch]

While MySQL has garnered most of the attention with respect to open source database solutions, there are plenty of other options, such as PostgreSQL. This week I take a look at PostgreSQL and explain how you can utilize it as the backend for .NET applications.

Telnet is a popular way to access a remote system, unfortunately, it is incredibly insecure.

Levanta on Tuesday released the Intrepid M 4.2 Linux management appliance, which can virtualize entire Linux configurations in minutes through a unique kernel plug-in technology.

High level languages are increasingly being used in preference to C and C++ in new desktop software. One of these languages best supported in KDE and Qt is Python. To find out about the history and current state of PyQt KDE Dot News talked to Phil Thompson, author and maintainer of the bindings.

As Mozilla prepares to release updates for its calendar applications Sunbird and Lightning, project developers are calling on the user community to participate in the final stages of testing. Mozilla has proclaimed today as Test Case Writing Day, and users worldwide are encouraged to participate.

One thing most people are bad at is remembering things -- anniversaries, deadlines, schedules. Computers, on the other hand, are very good at tracking things -- so long as you have a way to tell them to do so. Remind, a GPLed calendar and alarm application from Roaring Penguin, is a good way to keep track of your appointments and commitments on your computer so you don't need to worry about keeping them in your head.

Health IT Strategist isreporting that a bill has been introduced to congress to unify the DOD and Veterans Affairs EMR/EHR software systems:'...Joseph Dal Molin - a director of the not-for-profitWorldVistA, which promotes the use of open source VistA software - said that if the DOD used VistA"[i]t would lower software costs for both organizations." He added that if the DOD adopted the VA's EHR architecture, both organizations would benefit from individual and joint development efforts...'

This is the first in a series of newsletters, where we talk with Linux experts who will be speaking at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, which runs Aug. 14-17 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

A small Canadian company is taking orders for a mobile robot that runs Linux, and is based on standard, modular PC components, interfaces, and bays -- sort of a PC on motorized wheels. WhiteBox Robotics says its 914 PC-Bot "does everything a PC does," with the added capability of mobility.

LXer Feature: 8-Aug-2006

I am sure that like me, you have all had your, “My system went down and took everything with it” event, or events. Now if I had just had a back-up program that had all of my files in it already..Hmmm.

Rick Moen’s LinuxMafia.com knowledgebase has some great information. I ran across a series of postings the other day that clarified the problem with loadable Linux kernel modules at the GPL. As usual, the dividing line between legal and illegal (or permitted and infringing) rests on the legal definition of a derivative work. The usual “is it linking?” question brought up by the GPL is sort of misleading here. As well, Linus’ policy during the early years of the kernel can be a little confusing.

[...]

I look forward to a Linux kernel copyright holder contacting a blob vendor with this argument. Companies that desire so strongly to “protect [their] valuable intellectual property” might consider respecting the copyright of everyrone who has contributed to the kernel; their argument wears thin by their hypocrisy.