Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

A good system administrator is always looking for ways to make life a bit easier. The Levanta Intrepid M, a turnkey Linux management appliance, is one way to smooth out some of the rough edges of system deployment and make things run just a bit smoother in your IT environment. I spent some time using the Intrepid M appliance, and found it to be a well-designed product. Too bad the pricing makes it unsuitable for some IT budgets.

Linux leader Red Hat is aggressively pushing its Linux solutions into the telecom space with a series of new partner initiatives. One part of the push is Red Hat's partnership with IBM and HP which is intended to produce a hardware and software combination targeted at carrier-grade deployment. The other part is Red Hat's Telecommunications Partner Program, which is about driving both awareness and adoption of Red Hat-based carrier-grade solutions and platforms.

Today, just about any company can web-enable its business by having a static “billboard” web site on the Internet. As the business progresses, the static web site may then evolve to dynamic web sites with database-driven, interactive content. However, not every business has an adequate regard for the need for Internet security, even as they rush to create static or dynamic web sites.

In the last two years, Martin Michlmayr has gone from serving as Debian Project Leader to studying for a doctorate at the Centre for Technology Management, University of Cambridge. His dissertation, tentatively titled "Quality Improvement in Volunteer Free Software Projects: Exploring the Impact of Release Management," is sponsored by Google, Intel, and other companies with an interest in free software development.

Sauce for the gooseMalware authors are adopting open source development models to develop more potent threats. It's well known among security experts that botnet clients such as SDBot are written in a modular framework that allows hackers to add features that, for example, facilitate its spread through IM networks or add more potent attack features.…

If you're using Asterisk for your voice over IP needs, you'll need to lock down your Asterisk server, and that begins with secure passwords.

The open source network simulation tool ns-2 is an invaluable tool for researchers working on wired or wireless networks. I came across ns-2 while working on my thesis. I needed a network simulator, and since my college lacked the brand-name heavyweights, I had to look for an alternative that was free but could do the job. While ns-2 is free, it's also pretty unfriendly.

The Free Standards Group...today announced Linuxprinting.org, the de facto standard repository for printer drivers on Linux, is merging with the FSG's OpenPrinting workgroup and will be integrated and supported in the Linux Standard Base (LSB). The result will be easier and standardized printing functionality on Linux and an ease of support for Linux and printing vendors and makes the Free Standards Group the central organization for printing on Linux and open source Unix.

Welcome to this year's 29th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Harald Welte announces the availability of a root filesystem based on Debian sarge and a corresponding kernel plus instructions for EZX phones. Raphaël Hertzog has the impression that the Debian project is merely trying to keep packages up-to-date and that the project is not making any significant improvements.

Every sysadmin will try its best to secure the system/s he is managing. Hopefully you never had to restore your own system from a compromise and you will not have to do this in the future. Working on several projects to restore a compromised Linux system for various clients, I have developed a set of rules that others might find useful in similar situations.

How does one live in Gloucester County in the summer and study penguins? Gloucester resident and Virginia Institute of Marine Science student Heidi Geisz is finding out.

[Ok, ok, it's not about FOSS, but it mentions penguins, Gentoo and Adele. It's still fascinating. -- grouch]

At the recent KDE Four Core meeting Aaron Seigo interviewed a number of the developers. You can hear them now on the new KDE://radio site.

The localisation of OpenOffice.org into the Georgian language is to be completed this summer. It marks part of an important process taking place in Georgia, a former Soviet republic. A year ago the ministry of education decided to rely on open source software in its multimillion-dollar school computerisation project Deer Leap because delivering software in Georgian was only possible if open source was chosen; Microsoft's local partner had just announced another delay in releasing Georgian Windows.

Instead of being a separate license, the LGPL will be the GPL with additional privileges, a kind of template of what additions should be. First Stallman:

Building an open source–based infrastructure has helped mid-market Bonhams compete with the auction industry superpowers.

Linux graphics stack vendor Trolltech recently supplied LinuxDevices.com with a Motorola Rokr E2 music phone for (p)review. The phone appears to be the same E2 that shipped in China last week through carrier China Mobile, but semi-localized to the U.S., to demonstrate the phone's capabilities

Matt Zimmerman has responded to a recent NewsForge article that suggests that the maintainers of derivative distributions are unintentionally violating the requirements of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Ubuntu's technical leader says the project may be able to help.

A Japanese tech group taps low-cost components to help spur development of humanoid robots.

[A Nerd I may be, but I liked the Transformers and Macross Saga and Star Wars and... - Scott]

Doc Searls wrote a magnificant column for an upcoming issue of LJ. He uses the movie"Matrix" to raise issues similar to the one I'm about to raise. His upcoming column should be considered a must-read for anyone who cares about free software and free speech.

The world depicted in a different movie,"Brazil", is similar to that of Matrix in that it is governed bycontrolling self-interest. Freedom, as in free speech, is a partial cure for controlling self-interest, which is what makes the concept of free software superior to any other type of software. But there's more to free software than concept. There's implementation. And that's where free software sometimes gets into trouble with self-interest.

[I have to admit, I completely agree with him. I can't believe it. - Scott]

OpenOffice.org extensions are a quick way to add functionality. Writable in a variety of languages, including Java, JavaScript, OpenOffice.org Basic, Python, and C++, they allow developers to contribute features without having to master much of OpenOffice.org's notoriously cryptic source code. For users, they provide quick fixes for commonly requested features.