Showing headlines posted by henke54

Parastal CSIR, South Africa’s national science and technology research organisation, is readying to switch most of its more than 2300 staff to using Ubuntu Linux as their default desktop.

The government-led Korean digital textbook project will adopt Linux. The Ministry of Knowledge Economy and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of Korea announced their decision to choose the open software for digital textbook, the key project for the government's digital education policy. The digital textbook provides the contents of conventional textbooks, reference books, workbooks and terminologies in the form of video files, animations and virtual reality. It is the main learning material for students with various interactive features that cater for the needs of learners with different levels of capability.

"A French user asked for a refund after buying an ASUS computer that came with Windows XP and other software pre-installed. ASUS tried to apply a procedure which cost more money to the consumer than they will give back... The court ruled in favor of the user, who received back 130 Euro (~200 $) for the software. Here is the ruling (PDF, French). In France, this is the fourth victory for refund seekers during the last two years, and many people are now filing for refunds (in French). Two French associations (AFUL and April) published a press release on this victory the same day an important hearing happened." dutch link :http://www.zdnet.be/news.cfm?id=85367 http://www.aful.org/communiques/court-paris-ufc-darty

A member of the European Parliament has raised the question as to whether Microsoft should be banned from all government procurements in Europe. Heidi Rühle, a member of the EU Parliament who represents Germany's Green Party, has formally tabled a question - which is actually more of a suggestion - asking if Microsoft ought to be deemed to have failed to meet the EU conditions required to participate in public procurements in European Union countries.

The brazilian Election Supreme Court announced at April 4th 2008, that the 2008 elections at Brazil will use GNU / Linux electronic voting machines with software digital authentication. The Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (the brazilian Election Supreme Court), officially announced on April 4th, 2008, that the brazilian 2008 elections will use 430 thousand electronic voting machines migrated from VirtuOS and Windows CE to GNU / Linux and open source softwares for security and auditing defined by proper law.

I contacted the Hotmail support staff (and for the first time since 1997, I actually got an answer) about the matter. Me: Why, exactly, is “Full” disabled if one masks “Win” as the OS in the User Agent string, considering that Firefox doesn’t use any Windows subsystem other than the TCP/IP stack and GDI? On Windows XP, hiding the fact that I’m using Windows in the UA string disables “Full”, while masquerading as Firefox for Windows under Linux X86-64 (and a 64-bit build of Firefox) “Full” works very well. This is their short answer: Hotmail Staff : Mitch, after reviewing the information you provided, I determined that Microsoft Product Support Services Team could best address your issue. They are tasked to provide all the information you need to be able to configure correctly your Windows Live Hotmail through Outlook Express. Yes, you’ve read that correctly: since Hotmail Full won’t work under Firefox for Linux, configure Outlook Express to access your account.

Yesterday, the Tweede Kamer (Second Chamber) of the Dutch parliament adopted a plan to switch the country's public sector over to open standards. At the same time, authorities will be called upon to use open source software wherever possible. The 26-page paper from the Dutch Economics Ministry obligates governmental services to provide reasons why they need to continue to use proprietary solutions, such as operating systems or office suites from Microsoft, starting next April; next December, this duty will be imposed upon all public authorities. At the same time, authorities are required to come up with a strategy that includes a timeline for migration to open standards and free software.

Right after the Court of First Instance announced its verdict Monday upholding the EU Commission's finding that Microsoft abused its monopoly, our own Sean Daly did an interview with the following: Georg Greve of FSFE, Jeremy Allison and Volker Lendecke of Samba, and Carlo Piana, their lawyer of record in the case. It's a delight. Here's the audio [Ogg and MP3], and we have a transcript too, thanks to the tireless Ciaran O'Riordan, who did three-quarters of it, and Sean, who did the rest.

What is The Linux Vault? The Linux Vault is a new wiki project founded with the mission of creating a centralized GNU/Linux information website. It has just been created, so we are begging everybody to take part of it and make it the place for writing guides, how-tos, configurations, administration tips, tricks, tweaks or whatever else related to the GNU/Linux system. We are currently setting things up, and we still have yet to explain what's the difference between our project, and all the others, like http://www.howtoforge.com.

A competitor to the recently created OS Linux software developers’ alliance is to appear in the near future. St. Petersburg Company Linux Ink has developed a project within which the domestic open-source community participants are suggested to enter an alternative consortium. It is to forge active PR-operations and close cooperation with educational institutions, the organizers say. They also offer their own development methods for Linux-products, which are to be used in Russian schools.

Linux OEM companies can survive, even flourish. As far as I’m concerned, System76.com remains king here in the States. They've proven that a 'Linux only' approach is strong enough to stand on its own without needing to rely on Windows as a backup OS option to be pre-installed. Besides specializing in Linux-only systems, the best Linux OEMs go that extra mile in customer service, in addition to providing extra needed functionality. Especially when the distribution itself falls short in an area of hardware compatibility.

The development of the kernel has changed, and Linux is just getting better and better. However, with a community as large and fractured as the Linux community, it can sometimes be hard to get a big picture overview of where Linux is going: what's happening with kernel version 2.6? Will there be a version 3.0? What has Linus been up to lately? What does he get up to in his spare time? I had the opportunity to chat with the original creator of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, in a number of email exchanges.

Last summer, CareGroup CIO John Halamka began looking for a viable alternative to the Microsoft Windows desktop operating system. After 16 years using Windows, he had enough of its instability and the countless updates that automatically installed themselves on his computer—often at inopportune times, like when he was in the middle of a presentation. As CIO of a health-care organization and affiliated medical school with 40,000 employees and 9 million patient records, Halamka has to be sure that the computers in the hospital, its administrative offices and medical school are secure, stable and easy to use.

LONDON, UK: Alfresco Software, Inc., provider of open source enterprise content management has announced the immediate availability of its first-ever global survey of trends in the use of open source software in the enterprise. The Alfresco open source barometer survey, conducted April through June 2007 using opt-in data provided by 10,000 of the 15,000 Alfresco community members, showed that Windows is increasingly a popular evaluation platform for open source software but most enterprises use Linux when they go into production. “The survey shows there is a clear leader at each level of the open source stack but also indicates an increasing trend for organizations to adopt a mixed stack, combining both open source and proprietary software, to enable use of best of breed components,” said Ian Howells, CMO, Alfresco Software Inc.

The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance), the leading organization advocating for openness and accessibility to government documents and information, today congratulated Japan for adopting a policy under which government ministries and agencies will solicit bids from software vendors whose products support internationally recognized open standards. The new guidelines, available from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, were designed to be implemented by government ministries and agencies. The interoperability framework also suggests that the guidelines would also be useful for private industry.

Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format specification is fatally flawed where it comes to spreadsheets, with many functions filled with careless errors, according to Rob Weir, a systems architect for IBM and a member of various ODF technical committees. Weir documented seven specific problems in a blog post, and said there are others.

IBM announced today that they are simplifying access to their patent portfolio as it applies to open standards. "IBM's commitment not only applies to the distributors, developers or manufacturers that are implementing the specifications involved, but also extends to their users or customers. It is valid as long as adopters are not suing any party -- not just IBM -- over necessary patented technology needed to implement the standards."

Canonical, a company best known for the Ubuntu Linux distribution, has released Storm, a generic open source object relational mapper (ORM) for Python. Storm is designed to support communication with multiple databases simultaneously.

Psst. Want to buy a zero-day? A Swiss startup called WabiSabiLabi Ltd. has some for sale, but to qualified buyers only. On Tuesday, the company launched a security vulnerability marketplace, where details on unpatched software flaws can be bought and sold. By Thursday, the site was offering details on four bugs in products such as the Linux kernel and Yahoo Messenger. No bids had yet been registered, and asking prices for the research ranged between $681 and $2724. An 0day vulnerability is a previously undisclosed bug that has not been fixed by the vendor.

When you hear the name EPSON, what images come to your mind? Mine, like many of you I’m sure goes to inkjet printers, or even scanners. But Linux-powered PCs? That one never crossed my mind.