Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The Higgins Trust Framework Project is the recipient of IBM code that may allow users to hide their personal information on the Internet. Identity Mixer, the donated software, permits consumers to enter anonymous digital credentials from a bank or government agency to buy a product or enter a Web site that asks for a birth date.

Andrew Tanenbaum is a huge figure in the field of computer science; developers who work in the area of operating systems tend to have at least one of his books on their shelf. Linus Torvalds also occupies a prominent position. But when these two people are discussed together, the topic is almost always the famous debate between the two which happened early in the history of Linux. Mr. Tanenbaum called Linux "obsolete," and made it clear that he would not have been proud to have Mr. Torvalds as a student; Linus made some choice comments of his own in return.

KDevelop 3.4 has been released, bringing many new features to KDE's Integrated Development Environment. The first major release in over a year closes more than 500 bugs. There is an impressive list of additional features including improved Qt 4 support, new debugging abilities, more attractive default user interface layout and improvements for C++, Ruby and PHP support. Packages are available for Kubuntu and openSUSE with unofficial builds for several others on the download page.

The long-awaited next version of the Debian open-source operating system is most likely to be released in February, according to members of the Debian community.

It’s important to understand volunteer motivation to encourage further altruistic and mutually beneficial behavior. O’Reilly Editor Andy Oram has created a short survey for people to contribute to community documentation: “Do you answer questions on mailing lists about how to use a software tool or language? Do you write documentation, put up web pages, or contribute to wikis about software? If so, please take the following survey to help O’Reilly do research that will help us understand why people contribute to documentation (versus software projects themselves.) The results will be published on the O’Reilly web site, and may help software projects and communities get more such contributions. We’re only interested in hearing from people who do this for non-monetary reasons.

Foreword -- The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and Free Standard Group (FSG) merged on Jan. 21, creating the Linux Foundation, a single entity aiming to take responsibility for Linux standardization, promotion, and protection. LinuxDevices.com wasted no time interviewing Jim Zemlin, the new mega-organization's executive director.

In Part 1 of this series, DesktopLinux.com columnist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols prepared a system for use in comparing the features and performance of Windows Vista with Linux. In this second segment, our fearless curmudgeon installs the two operating systems and configures the resulting system for dual-booting, using the GRUB bootloader.

Barely a week after a U.S. judge approved a landmark antitrust agreement with Microsoft, company executives were swapping e-mails suggesting Dell deserved a beating for its growing interest in Linux, according to documents filed with a state court.

As an educator, I am interested in course management systems (CMS) applications for courses, curriculums, and institutions. Well-known proprietary CMS applications such as WebCT and Blackboard are too expensive for the schools and companies I work with. After testing and playing with several open source CMS applications, my favorite is Moodle.

An industry coalition that has represented competitors of Microsoft in European markets before the European Commission stepped up its public relations offensive this morning, this time accusing Microsoft of scheming to upset HTML's place in the fabric of the Internet with XAML, an XML-based layout lexicon for network applications.

Web 2.0 is a popular buzzword, but nobody seems altogether sure what it means. It has something to do with user-driven content and interaction among users, but is there more to it?

Scalix Corporation...today announced its appointment of GT-Enterprises, India’s leading distributor of Linux-related products, as a Scalix Master Distributor. Scalix also signed agreements with six new value added resellers (VARs) across India, all who have extensive Linux and messaging expertise.

Themis Computer revealed on Thursday plans to join Terra Soft Solutions to develop a complete Linux distribution for Themis' TPPC64, a high-end computer built around a next-generation single-board computer, featuring an advanced 64-bit architecture and 90 nm silicon on insulator technology. The TPPC64 is designed to operate in harsh environments.

Bug stamp-out list for January 26, 2007

Last year the Italian FreeBSD user group, GUFI, rekindled the FreeSBIE project to develop a live CD based on the FreeBSD operating system. After more than four months of development, and an equal number of beta releases, the project released FreesBIE 2.0 this month. Codenamed Clint Eastwood, the live CD is based on the recent FreeBSD 6.2 release, and is an ideal platform to experience BSD and learn how things are done in BSD land.

Those with long IT backgrounds may associate Unisys with mainframes, or large enterprise services integration, but the company is driving to become more of a player in open source software and Linux technology.

Tired of the networks telling you what to watch? Check out Democracy TV, giving users access to the best indie video on the Net. No TV license required.

IBM has developed software designed to let people keep personal information secret when doing business online and donated it to the Higgins open-source project.

I've got to hand it to Practical PHP and MySQL author Jono Bacon: There aren't a lot of writers who could get me to bring a book about Web development on a plane to keep from being bored. He understands that some people don't want hundreds of pages of tutorials about everything a language has to offer. Instead, Practical PHP and MySQL dives right in with a compact, efficient overview of both the PHP programming language and using a MySQL database, and follows that with some hands-on projects.

Want a job working in Linux? Then one of your first steps should be to get an LPIC-1 (Linux Professional Institute first level) certification. In the past, getting this entry-level certification could be easier said than done, since classes aren't available everywhere.