Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

GeoGebra, a GPL-licensed teaching and learning tool that integrates geometry, algebra, and calculus, benefits both teachers and students alike. Developed by Markus Hohenwarter at Florida Atlantic University, GeoGebra constructs geometrical figures and demonstrates the relationship between geometry and algebra. GeoGebra can help you create interactive demonstrations and precise images of geometric figures for inclusion in teaching and testing materials.

Adoption of OSI-approved GPL v3 License Strengthens Open Source Community Participation In Leading Open Source Document Management Project

Open-source tools are finding their way into the stack, but few support mission-critical functions. Database administrators increasingly find open-source technologies in Oracle data centers.

ToorCon 9, a hacker's convention, kicked off with registration and a reception Friday evening in the San Diego Convention Center. Keynotes and the talks were held Saturday and Sunday. This was my first time at ToorCon, and I learned why it is so highly regarded among the hacker community. It's good. There were probably a few feds in the crowd, but for the most part attendees were hackers or hacker wannabes. ToorCon occupied only a small fraction of the enormous convention center; the whole thing was conducted in three meeting rooms on the upper level.

Tackling a Linux problem takes skill, but also a lot of flexibility. A. Lizard takes the lessons shown earlier in this three-part series and demonstrates how to solve a real-life problem with his methodology.

There are many concurrent ongoing dangers in the world of Free Software. Among them, you will find software patents, hidden restrictions in obnoxious licenses and trademark lawsuits which seem to be absolutely unavoidable unless one has deep pockets filled with money for defense. Recently, expensive interoperability clauses have been added to the mix. Formerly, protection against such issues was achieved by adding condemnations to existing licenses.

Steve Ballmer believes that Microsoft is the only company with "the wherewithal" to dominate the world of mobile computing. Appearing at CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment, a massive mobile tradeshow underway in downtown San Francisco, the Microsoft supremo told show goers that the company has the upper-hand on the likes of Apple and Blackberry-maker Research in Motion because its Windows Mobile platform is so darn versatile. Windows Mobile plays nicely with both enterprise and entertainment applications, he explained, and it's open to third party developers.

["the wherewithal" huh, Why do I not believe him? - Scott]

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Fortune-teller and Keyboard Layout applets for Plasma, KNewsTicker resurrected for KDE 4.0 as a Plasmoid. Rewrite of canvas tag support in KHTML. Various new language syntax highlighting in Kate. Internal database storage work in Digikam. More playlist handling work, and support for Magnatune "streaming membership" in Amarok 2. OpenDocument loading of charts in KChart for KOffice 2. Various graphics fixes and a user handbook for the Bovo game. Kolourpaint is now fully ported to Qt4. Continued work on the Eigen 2 library. Further porting away from KDEPrint to the printing facilities provided by Qt4.

Fedora 8 test releases have a surprise for all users interested in graphics: a release candidate for the new GIMP 2.4, meaning the final version will get the stable GIMP 2.41. This is exciting news, as the previous major release, GIMP 2.2, is several years old, and a lot of new features were added in the meantime.

Not all major software versions carry the same weight. Consider the last two releases of the Fedora distribution. Fedora 7 offered little that was obvious to desktop users, despite some behind-the-scenes improvements and the opening of the release process to public scrutiny. By contrast, if Test 3 of Fedora 8 is any indication, the upcoming release, scheduled for next month, returns to the distribution's tradition of introducing a variety of innovations. Some of these innovations, like the new firewall tool, are minor, if still welcome. Others, like the IcedTea version of Java and Codec Buddy, are flawed, but may eventually find their way into other distributions.

Still seeking OASIS approval, The Open Document Foundation (ODF) has quietly ended all work on its da Vinci project after failing to secure approval from the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).

Hackers twist ad network into Trojan network. Hackers have rooted into a server owned by internet advertising network24/7 Real Media and used it to serve malware-laced banner ads that tried to circumvent security mechanisms on end users' machines, Symantec researchers said. The malware exploited a previously unknown vulnerability in Real Player that was patched on Friday.

When it comes to managing processes, many people use old reliable commands such as ps, top, kill, and nice. These commands are handy, useful, and found in every Linux distribution. However, sometimes a GUI process manager can be useful, especially when you're trying to teach new Linux system administrators who aren't used to shell interfaces. Qps Visual Process Manager is a GUI ps substitute that lets you sort, manipulate, and manage processes.

Adding to its list of Linux partners, Microsoft has extended its collaboration agreement with Asian Linux vendor Turbolinux. Promising collaboration efforts and controversial intellectual property assurances for Turbolinux users, the deal could be seen as the latest attempt by Microsoft to extend its reach into the rich prize that is the Asian market.

Oracle is taking its Unbreakable Linux down a slightly different path from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. First, let's make this clear. Oracle Unbreakable Linux was, is now and is for the foreseeable future going to be based on Red Hat's Enterprise Linux codebase. It is not, however, going to be simply RHEL's twin in every way. When Oracle first announced the release of Unbreakable Linux, many people saw it as a purely anti-Red Hat move. Larry Ellison, Oracle's CEO, doesn't like competition. What he likes is winning.

When you type a URL into Firefox's address bar a drop-down menu appears based on your history. To select the most relevant entry you use the arrow keys (or your mouse) to select it. For better URL auto-completion have a look at Firefox's about:config area and set the browser.urlbar.autoFill value to true.

"Sysrq-p is pretty useless unless you can force the keyboard interrupt and the spinning process onto the same CPU," noted Chuck Ebbert during a discussion centered around debugging tasks stuck in a running state. Pressing the

key combination is used for debugging, dumping the registers and flags from the CPU that handles the keypress interrupt to the console. UltraSPARC maintainer, David Miller, replied, "yes, I find this a painful limitation too,"

Dimdim calls itself the world's first free Web meeting service based on an open source platform. Users can share their desktops and files while chatting and videoconferencing with meeting participants. Dimdim was originally licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL), but the possibility of a big deal with a university made Dimdim executives eventually change to the GNU General Public License (GPL) instead. By changing the software's license from the MPL to the GPL, "we are making it easier for the community to use our product," says Dimdim founder DD Ganguly.

SourceForge.net, through good times and bad, has established itself as the core outpost of open source development on the Web. A look inside one of the open source community's strongest assets.

The Linux developer says it will now focus on its Qtopia platform and leave the hassles of hardware to other companies.