Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Legend has it that a Moleskine notebook and a pen were the tools of choice for Chatwin and Hemingway -- but that's because they didn't have Writer’s Café. Designed specifically for writing professionals, this application suite includes a few clever features that make it a must-have tool, whether you write for a living or for fun. Although the Writer's Café developers state that it's most suited for writing fiction, novels, and short stories, you can easily use it for all kinds of writing activities.

Recent crackdowns in pirated software among Kenya internet cafes has seen a number of cafe owners opting for open source software to keep on the right side of the law and to avoid what are often prohibitively costly licence fees.

While I was cleaning up my office I ran into the March 1986 issue of UNIX/WORLD, a long-since deceased magazine. I had saved this particular magazine because I am the author of the article featured on the cover: The Unix System on the IBM PC.

In theory, GDB, the GNU debugger, can ease the chore of debugging applications running on a Linux-based embedded system. In practice, setting up GDB for this task is a bit of a challenge; it takes some work, and there are some technical hurdles to overcome. However, the benefits of having a way to methodically debug a program instead of guessing what's wrong with it far outweigh the effort involved. Here are some tips for easing the difficulties.

Did the OpenDocument Foundation recently shutter its doors for good because it was unable to convince Oasis to support its converter, known as Da Vinci? Or was it because OpenDocument Format was simply not designed for the conversion of Microsoft Office documents, applications, and processes? The debate on these issues continues two weeks after foundation members confirmed the organization had shut down.

In a recent Red Hat Magazine article, Paul Frields gave some examples of how SSH port forwarding can be used to remotely gain access to resources, or ports, from a remote location. This article will show a pragmatic implementation of SSH port forwarding by demonstrating how to use configuration files and conditional statements to create permanent, yet dynamic, SSH configurations for your home, office, and any virtual machines you may have on your systems.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: A Trash applet, various general improvements, and support for sharing configuration layouts in Plasma. "Undo close tab" feature in Konqueror. Development continues towards Amarok 2.0, with services becoming plugins and support for the Amapche music server. Continued progress in KDevelop and KEduca. More work on album display and improved thumbnails (with RAW format support) in Digikam. A BitTorrent plugin for KGet, based on the recently created libktorrent. Directory monitoring-and-update support in NEPOMUK. Work returns to Okteta, a hex editing utility. "Connection Status" plugin removed from Kopete. Kile begins to be ported to KDE 4, whilst work begins on KGPG2. Goya, a GUI widget framework, is imported into playground.

When SCO filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, it was widely seen as a move to avoid the final steps in its case with Novell. On Nov. 27, however, the bankruptcy court lifted its stay on the Novell trial, and so the SCO/Novell court case is once again free to proceed.

Google's Andy Rubin talks nuts and bolts about the Linux-based phone software, the lessons of Sidekick, and the beauty of the iPhone.

I have used X10 modules on assorted lights and devices for home automation for several years, and although the remote control facet has always worked well, tying the system into my Linux boxes has never been easy. Numerous small, typically one-person X10 controller projects have come and gone. But one application has survived: Heyu. It runs on desktop Linux machines without requiring the overhead of a Web or database server, and it enables direct X10 control, event scheduling, and more.

Until Red Hat, Novell, or another party focuses around open-source directory services, Linux will be stuck playing catch-up with Windows 2000. I've been covering Linux and open-source software closely since the dawn of this millennium, and over those seven or so years I've become a believer in the potency of the open-source development model.

Once upon a time, Firefox was known for being far less prone to security bugs than Internet Explorer. Things have changed. On Nov. 27, Mozilla released the newest, security-patched version of the popular Web browser, Firefox 2.0.0.10. The vast majority of Firefox users will have the latest and greatest automatically installed on their systems. This latest update includes fixes for three security bugs.

The success of the Everex gPC this month raises once again the possibility that Linux can make inroads into the desktop market. In stock at Walmart, initial sales of the gPC caused panic on a scale comparable to the recent stock market panic. Not only has the gPC sold well - it has also proved popular.

The three biggest community Linuxes are Fedora, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu. They're all popular. They're all good. But which is the best? Desktop Linuxes are improving so quickly that it's hard even for someone like me, who tracks operating systems the way some people track their favorite NFL team's game match-ups, to keep tabs on what's what with the latest distributions. That's even true for the major community Linux distributions: Fedora 8, OpenSUSE 10.3 and Ubuntu 7.10.

Believe it or not, even virtual penguins have a part to play in the global warming debate. Scott Allen, Europcar chief information officer, says extending the life of desktops is a form of recycling. "Most front-end staff desktops have the booking application and a browser," Allen says. "They don't need anything else so there's no point getting a powerful PC packed with software, which they would never use."

As Microsoft's Office Open XML document format remains in ISO limbo, a trio of countries are pushing forward an adoption of the alternative Open Document Format (ODF) instead, according to an ODF advocacy group. Government ministries and state services in the Netherlands will begin to add ODF support next April, according to a statement from the Washington-based ODF Alliance. All other governmental organizations there are set to follow no later than December 2008.

Haier America is shipping a WiFi-enabled portable media player (PMP) based on Linux. The "Ibiza Rhapsody" has a 30GB hard drive, and is designed to work with the Rhapsody digital music service, AOL Video, and other digital content services.

Groklaw is the blog that has made a difference. Created as a personal project by Pamela Jones, better known as PJ, in 2003, its stated purpose was to increase understanding of the law as it is applied to Linux and free software.

Eric Raymond made the point years ago that most software is written for use, not for sale. Eric put the number at 95%; that is, 95% of all software is written for in-house use, rather than for sale. If he's right, and I believe he's not far off, then banks, manufacturers, retail chains, etc. are sitting on a massive gold mine of software.

Want a coat with a story behind it? Act fast, and you can buy Lawrence Lessig's hand-tailored coat, as seen in lecture halls around the world through the iCommons 2008 Auction.