Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

In this paper, we examine the motivations of large information technology vendors, to invest in open source software. What drives companies with large, proprietary software portfolios to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in OSS? We approach this question by grouping a sample of OSS projects into clusters and examining vendors' motivations for each cluster. We find one cluster has received almost no investment. Contributions to projects in this cluster are confined to the voluntary effort of the vendors' employees, and vendors are likely altruistically motivated. By contrast, the other cluster has received over 99% of vendor investments.

Opera Software ASA has added a filter that blocks phishing sites to its Web browser software, following the example set by rivals Microsoft Corp. and Mozilla Corp. In Version 9.1 of the Opera Web browser, released Monday, the company introduced a phishing filter that uses information from PhishTank and GeoTrust to help protect users from being duped by phishers.

It seems like a great idea: making a computer that's somewhere between the size of a cell phone and a laptop, for people to carry around and surf the Web. It's such a great idea that about a dozen companies have tried it, but most of these gadgets have met with such complete apathy among consumers you'd think they were made of ignoranium.

A few weeks ago, Xandros released an update of its Business Desktop OS with a number of new features, including 3-D effects and desktop search. The 3-D effects fell flat in my tests, but I found the distro to be a pretty good OS if you're looking for a Windows replacement.

he open-source movement responsible for software like Linux and Mozilla's Web browser, Firefox, is proving contagious: A German entrepreneur is applying the same approach to automobile design.

The next version of the Linux distribution was due to be released by 4 December, meaning it is already over two weeks late at the time of writing. Now one of Debian's release managers has started pointing his finger at key individuals. In a blog posted on Monday, Andreas Barth wrote, "Some people who used to do good work reduced their involvement drastically. There was nothing I could do about that, and that happened way before I started full-time on release, but on the global picture that still counts."

The OpenOffice.org 2 Guidebook was published this week, and author Solveig Haugland is sharing some of its contents. Haugland takes a matter-of-fact approach to all the tools within the OO.org application suite, as she explains how to create, amend, and save documents in various formats.

Mozilla, the developer of the free Thunderbird e-mail client, has taken a good program and made it better with the release of the version 2.0 beta 1. It's rare that a beta release isn't buggy, clunky, and generally a mess -- especially when, as word has it, the developers are changing the code base -- but I was pleasantly surprised by its stability and the dearth of issues.

Atmel is shipping a low-cost embedded processor claimed to offer more bandwidth than other ARM9 chips, thanks to parallel buses and distributed DMA. The AT91SAM9263 targets data- and graphics-intensive applications, and is available with an AT91SAM9263-EK evaluation board that supports Linux.

Today we are releasing a new GNUmed version. Version is up to 0.2.3 Version features and bug fixes are explained in our Wiki http://wiki.gnumed.de/bin/view/Gnumed/ReleaseStatus http://wiki.gnumed.de/bin/view/Gnumed/RoadMap Packages available as usual for GNU/Linux and MS Windows Debian packages will follow soon I hope, MacOSX packages didn't make it yet due to unexplained problems with the Mac port. In general it looks like the code is getting much more stable and easier to fix and extent. Maybe one day we will even see an alternative GUI client :-)

Hosted VoIP (voice-over-IP) infrastructure provider Solegy is promoting its custom softphone development services by offering free downloads of a softphone (software phone). The Solegy Softphone is based on open-source software and codecs, is fully customizable, and can be integrated with Solegy's "ServicePDQ" hosted services framework, the company says.

Hands onLast month I looked at Qt, the popular C++ cross-platform framework which underpins the KDE desktop, and a whole lot more. This time, I'm continuing that same theme by taking a look at another cross-platform C++ library called Juce (OK, no jokes about Apple Juce!)

Avatars show where the work isIBM hascut a deal with US electronic gizmo retailer Circuit City Stores to build a virtual store on one of the private fiefdoms it occupies on Second Life. There, virtual visitors will, in the form of their on-screen avatar, be able to go down the aisles of the store and examine products. The products can then be or ordered via the website.

[I don't know much about second Life, but what happens if your avatar gets robbed while ordering? - dcparris]

In general, you are not allowed to discriminate against the physically disabled in the workplace. When one thinks of a job in software development, however, one conjures up the image of programmers building applications or writing code in front of a computer screen - tasks apparently relying on good vision.

Linux is better at locking down a computer than Windows. The Linux OS uses configuration settings and user permissions to a much more efficient degree than the Windows administrator account. To do this, non-enterprise users should seek help from third-party security suites that serve as configuration managers, James Bottomley, chief technology officer of SteelEye Technology said.

Organisations preparing to move to virtual environments will find broader options in 2007 as competitors to market leader VMware emerge with enhanced, enterprise-ready offerings.

Lots of companies sell Linux servers, but how many promise 99.999% uptime? Not very many, but Stratus Technologies sells systems that offer the kind of fault tolerance that will handle mission-critical applications and leave admins with peace of mind. I had a chance to test out one of the company's ftServer 4300 systems, and it's an impressive system.

“What we need is a Web browser that doesn’t just serve up documents, but serves up applications.” Early in 2006 I was given a design brief: a UK-based shipping company wanted to replace its shipment tracking system with a Web-based solution.

When Larry Lessig proclaimed that "code is law" he was talking metaphorically. But for a virtual world, constructed entirely out of bits, it is literally true: the laws regarding what you can and cannot do there, both legally and even physically, are inscribed in the lines of code that implement it. In this space, then, open source has an added significance in that it not only lays bare the engines of creation, but it potentially allows them to be hacked.

This is a cool page with links to 352 Linux Distributions all on the same page.