Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Like many, I was pretty shocked by the recent Microsoft-EU deal to settle the long-running investigation into interoperability issues. This was not so much because of the way Microsoft has used every kind of delaying tactic it could before eventually agreeing (for the nth time) to try harder in the future. My real dismay was provoked by the gap between appearance and reality – a chasm that I think bodes ill for the future of open source.

This month’s issue of Wired Magazine had an article in it about LaLa, a CD swapping service. In the article, Wired’s Cliff Kuang wrote “The arrangement exploits a loophole in copyright law: While distributing duplicates is verboten, it’s perfectly legal to trade your own property.”

MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) are text-driven cooperative or competitive games that you can play either straight from your terminal using the Telnet protocol or through a separate application specially designed to play MUDs. The majority of MUDs are free to play. Here's how you can get started with them. To find a MUD that appeals to you, visit a MUD-list such as The Mud Connector or Mud Magic. Both have reviews and top-rated and "game of the month" features to help you find a MUD to jump into. I recommend Mud Magic for beginners, as it is easier to navigate and provides clear, comprehensive lists of top-10 MUDs.

Back in 1995, I read an article about the scarcity of webmasters and switched my specialty. I often look for hot spots and retool to meet the needs. Before 1995, Oracle Financials was hot. I just didn’t care much for the rigidity of technology. But, I was an accountant and an IT guy so I had tooled up for database programming.read more

The funny thing about those telling developers it's a new way of thinking and to "give everything away" or to "build it and they shall come" are often those making their cash using tried and tested ways of working.

This weekend, ten KOffice hackers congregated once again in the hospitable Berlin KDAB headquarters. KOffice has come a long way in six months: all the groundwork has been laid for the new version, KOffice 2.0. From Krita to KPresenter, KWord to KSpread, KChart to Karbon, KPlato to Kexi, and from KFormula to Kivio, the big underlying frameworks are ready. This meeting was called to decide on common look & feel issues and a release plan and schedule.

Internet-gentile mobile operator 3 finally released full details of its new Skype handset at an event in London today. Early adopters can expect free calls, but no guarantees of reliability.

Comment Canonical's release of a fresh version of Ubuntu has been met with plenty of grumbles. And now we find some other open source players trying to cash in on Ubuntu's issues.

A group of open source enthusiasts and professionals from various organizations in the academia and industry are presenting a workshop at the AMIA Symposium this November (Nov 10, 2007). The topic is"Open source tools and applications in medical informatics". We invite all those interested in using, contributing or collaborating to open source to attend.

The subject of testing seems to be in the air at the moment - Matt Stephens recently discussed it in his "Agile" column entitled "Don't unit test GUIs". This month in the Java column we are also going to look at testing, but this time from the viewpoint of design.

Privileges define the access level of the user, or what operations the user is allowed to do and the sections of the Command Center which the user is allowed to see. Every person entry in Command Center has some sort of privileges set.

. . . Intel Intel let the reviews go today on the new Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad-Core QX9650 processor. This processor is based on Intel's new 45nm manufacturing process and is the new big kid on the block.

Creative Commons (CC) cares about licensing. It has drafted and shared its own suite of licenses for artistic works catering to a wide range of needs, advocated license awareness, and contributed to projects that make both finding and publishing CC-licensed works simpler. Now it is seeking to make licensing enlightenment an everyday part of desktop computer usage with liblicense.

An ultra-low-cost laptop for children will be soon be available for purchase in computer stores in Vietnam. The "Hacao Classmate PC" is based on Intel's Classmate PC design, and will come pre-installed with Hacao Linux, a Vietnamese-language Linux distribution based on Puppy Linux.

The following is a review of the book SugarCRM Developer’s Manual: Customize and extend SugarCRM by Dr. Mark Alexander Bain. The book's publisher is Packt Publishing.

Most streaming audio and video on the Internet is disseminated in proprietary formats such as RM, RAM, WMV, and ASF. Fortunately, the open source application MPlayer can play and even record streams in almost any format.

When I downloaded Freespire 2.03 for review, I wasn't sure what I was going to get. The company behind it, Linspire, was in disarray, it had shifted from Debian to Ubuntu for its foundation, and the development of its key feature—CNR (Click 'N Run) download and install—seemed to have stalled out.

There's an enormous difference between your average PC consumer and the hardcore computer enthusiast. One of the key differences is how much time someone is willing to expend on a system.

In Windhoek last week, several African ministers met to review progress on their collective public service work. Chaired by FOSSFA patron and South African minister of public services and administration, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, the potential for free and open source software use was on the meeting's agenda.

Linux Mint 4.0, codenamed Daryana, was released on Friday. Based on the Ubuntu Gutsy packages, this distro appears to fulfill the development team's stated goal to "produce an elegant, up to date and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop distribution". It was described by DistroWatch as one of the surprise packages of the year and one of the most user-friendly distributions on the market. DistroWatch made particular note of the constant interaction between users and developers within the Linux Mint community.