Showing headlines posted by hkwint

For over 20 years, Microsoft and Intel have partnered to grow the PC industry. Now, Intel is launching a netbook that will use the Linux operating system and not Microsoft. Could it be the economy and the need for more revenue? Or could it be such a huge revenue opportunity for Intel that they can not let the high price of an operating system slow them down?

An Open XML Validator and a Document-Library are in the making courtesy of Fraunhofer FOKUS. With Microsoft as a development partner supporting its activities, Fraunhofer FOKUS is gearing up to introduce a new Document-Interoperability-Lab focused on ISO/IEC 29500 (also referred to as Office Open XML) and ECMA-376 (Ecma Office Open XML). The Document-Interoperability-Lab is designed to permit organizations to test documents in order to assess whether the development was based on the two Open XML internationally standardized formats.

LXer Feature: 19-May-2009

Most Linux adepts will agree Linux could have a higher market share than it does today, if it had been marketed more effectively in the past. Therefore, lots of those adepts stress “Linux needs more marketing!” Some efforts have been done, most notably I remember the Indy 500 car which advertised Linux, and more recently the "We're Linux" Video Contest by Linux Foundation. One question hasn't been answered as of yet however: What's the goal of marketing Linux?

As Linux sysadmins, many of us still need to deal with Windows worms and how they affect our networks. Tomorrow is April 1st, and the Conficker worm will be activating on vulnerable computers everywhere. Here's a quick HOW-TO showing how you can detect compromised and/or vulnerable computers on your network: read more

MEDICAL Information Integration offers OpenEMR with full support and customization as a hosted service or installed at the customer’s location. Official Press release follows.

LXer Feature: 10-Dec-2008

A few weeks ago, I installed Debian for the first time on the desktop. Once, a friend and I installed a console-only version on another desktop and we connected remotely to his hosted game server which also ran Debian, so I hoped I should be a bit familiar with it. I have to note however, I have run Gentoo for the past four years, and most of the times it's hard to 'learn' something else. However, I still liked to try and find out for myself if Debian was an easy distribution to use. So, how did I fare?

Powered by the 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, the Toshiba NB100 comes in two variants – one with Linux Ubuntu 8.04 with OpenOffice 2.4, while one offers Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition.

Remember those awful Microsoft ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates? Well, now you can forget them.

[ Not FOSS related at all. But we should stay up to date with 'innovative' firms, don't we? - hkwint ]

T-DOSE 2008 is an event for learning about Open Source and the place for developers to meet ones peers. See theT-DOSE site for the schedule and other information. Possible subjects for talks are: Web 2.0, Desktop, Multimedia, Gaming, Embedded and other good ideas. Speakers can send ideas and abstracts to: abstracts@t-dose.org. The e-mail should contain a short biography of the speaker and description of the talk. All talks will be held in English.
T-DOSE 2008 will be held on 25 and 26 October 2008 at the Fontys University of Applied Science in Eindhoven (Google Maps), and abstracts can be sent until 30th September .

Sorry for posting this late. I'll be there too, and Sander might as well. - hkwint]

LXer Feature: 24-Jul-2008

The GNU/Linux operating system is blessed to have sound partition management tools like GParted which are very easy to use. However, when it comes to the management of 'virtual partitions' known as volumes, things are quite different. There is Logical Volume Management, or LVM for short, however it can only really be used from the command line. Also, it doesn't integrate software RAID - except for striping. I was quite optimistic when I started using volume management some four years ago, but not anymore. Let me explain why I'm disappointed.

In 2007 a handful of countries began a treaty-making process to create a new global standard for intellectual property rights enforcement, the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). ACTA is spearheaded by the US, the EU Commission, Japan, and Switzerland — those countries with the largest intellectual property industries. Other countries invited to participate in ACTA’s negotiation process are Canada, Australia, Korea, Mexico and New Zealand. Noticeably absent from ACTA’s negotiations are leaders from developing countries.

After the multi-lateral treaty’s scope and priorities are negotiated by the few countries invited to participate in the early discussions, ACTA’s text will be “locked” and other countries who are later “invited” to sign-on to the pact will not be able to re-negotiate its one-sided terms. It is claimed that signing-on to the trade agreement will be "voluntary", but few countries will have the muscle to refuse an “invitation” to join, once the rules have been set by the select few conducting the negotiations.

[This is news because May 22th a discussion paper appeared at WikiLeaks. In March, when it was yet unknown what ACTA would look like, IP Justice published the white paper the 'Full Story" links too. It's a paper about how the rich governments try to almost forbid P2P, stifle innovation through broader 'piracy protection', colonize poor countries and create more opportunities to spy on its citizens. All that in a secret undemocratic way; taking away digital rights. However, their excuses are quite good: Stopping dangerous fake-medicines, car parts etc. - hkwint]

At least three open source software suppliers submitted tenders to Becta yesterday for the £270,000 Schools Open Source Project. The winner will spend two years building a community of schools which uses and develops its own open source alternatives to Microsoft software.

The Dutch Council of State is willing to open source its application that can centrally convert documents between open formats and proprietary formats, said Marcel Pennock, the tool's developer, Wednesday at a conference on Open Document Format (ODF) in Utrecht.

The official text of the appeal in PDF.

The Moscow regional administration will test usefulness of an Open Source desktop by migrating several hundreds of desktop PCs to Mandriva GNU/Linux and by installing OpenOffice on a thousand others.

[Hmm, yeah, news from Russia travels a bit slow to LXer it seams; or is it just I should check the migration news more often? - hkwint]

The Russian Post has started testing the free software to be used in ordinary post offices. Cutting costs for software is one of the main reasons to migrate to Linux. No details are reported. However, according to some sources, the Russian Post might prefer Red Hat.

[Sunday is a good day to bring old news from a month ago, isn't it? Nonetheless, 125.000 new Linux desktop users are normally a reason for a big article, so a bit strange we missed this one. Sorry on behalf of the LXer team - hkwint]

[ Though not really 'news', this article presents an interesting overview of software patentability in Europe. It was written by two senior associates of a legal studio based in Rome - hkwint ]

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 21, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors. Specifically, Microsoft is implementing four new interoperability principles and corresponding actions across its high-volume business products: (1) ensuring open connections; (2) promoting data portability; (3) enhancing support for industry standards; and (4) fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.

[ In short: Microsoft closedness is backfiring, causing them troubles and they admit it. They are finally going to specify which patents come along with which of their protocols, and going to grant cheap commercial / gratis for non commercial use RAND licenses for those patents. I think this announcement could have a very big impact on Linux & free / open source software, that's why I'm posting this Microsoft news. If you believe it it's up to you; last time I posted a MS press release about their 'openness' it turned out to be all lies (called OOXML), so be aware, you are warned! - hkwint ]

A while ago, I wrote a comment on Brian Jones' OOXML blog, asking 'Why doesn't Microsoft try to save its clients money, instead of making sure their clients waste more money like which is the result of trying to get OOXML standardized at ISO?" I also used the form on his page to ask him to comment on my entry about two weeks ago, but till today, no reaction. Probably the people I'd like an answer from don't read LXer, but I thought I might try posting it anyway. The 'Full story' link links to my original comment of Dec 14th 2007. Sad to see there's no answer.

The European Commission has approved the EUPL on 9 January 2007. The licence has then been made available in English, French and German. By a second Decision of 9 January 2008, the European Commission has validated the EUPL in all the other official languages, in respect of the principle of linguistic diversity of the European Union. EUPL has been approved as a licence to be used for the distribution of software developed in the framework of the IDA and IDABC programmes. Nevertheles, the licence text is drafted in general terms and could therefore be used for other software applications, as the case may be. At a conference organised by the European Commission in Brussels last Friday, lawyers and license experts who helped sorting out terminology and linguistics differences for all of the translations began discussing which changes and extensions would be useful in an eventual next version.