Showing headlines posted by alc

Gmail users have no "reasonable expectation" that their emails are confidential, Google has said in a court filing. Consumer Watchdog, the advocacy group that uncovered the filing, called the revelation a "stunning admission." It comes as Google and its peers are under pressure to explain their role in the National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance of US citizens and foreign nationals.

Intel is getting into operating systems big time. The OSes in question run on Mobile Internet Devices and Intel has a big future mapped out for these things. It may not be betting the farm on them, but certainly the double garage, some of the barns and half the furniture could end up on the table.

Security vendor Kaspersky Labs found malware on new Windows XP netbook, just out from the factory. The firm is warning users to take extra precautions, and ensure virgin systems are malware free before connecting them to the Internet.

It has been a boast for around around 6 months now. OOXML defines spreadsheet formulas, and ODF doesn't. The Microsoft boosters have been parroting the party line for quite some time. But what you will not find is an examination of what OOXML actually specifies for spreadsheet formulas, or confirmation that it was done sufficiently. Maybe the assumption is that this would be a trivial task, documenting Excel's behavior? What could possibly go wrong? Let's find out.

After internal consideration in the Samba Team we have decided to adopt the GPLv3 and LGPLv3 licences for all future releases of Samba. To allow people to distinguish which Samba version is released with the new GPLv3 license, we are updating our next version release number. The next planned version release was to be 3.0.26, this will now be renumbered so the GPLv3 version release will be 3.2.0.

Dell Inc. plans to sell computers with preinstalled Linux outside the U.S. as well as offer the Ubuntu Linux distribution to small business customers.

Various theories are circulating as to why Microsoft has been so gung-ho about intellectual property enforcement lately. I have opined about it myself in other venues, basically putting forth the theory that the staff at Redmond is running a bit scared right now as they watch Linux slowly encompass the server market.

The board members of the Florida Linux Show 2008 have elected Jacksonville, Florida as the city to hold the 2008 Conference and Exhibition. This year's show will focus on moving from IPv4 to IPv6, Greener PCs, Linux and your desktop, Linux Certification, and much more.

The art of “selling” or generating revenue from open source is a topic of growing importance as open source takes a larger piece of the software business. In the past, open source revenue has largely been associated with services marketed by many top tier Linux companies: Support, middleware solutions, etc.

A group of open source start-ups have appeared on CBR's radar in recent weeks. I thought it was worth taking a quick look at their credentials to see how they progress from here. They are, in no particular order: Apatar, GravityZoo, LoopFuse, and Untangle (alright I lied, they're in alphabetical order). Here's our first impressions:

What's going on with Xen, the open source hypervisor that was supposed to give VMware a run for its money?

Earlier this year, The VAR Guy spent considerable time blogging about Zimbra’s open source email platform. He suspected that the collaboration suite would gain momentum with colleges. Boy was he right. In recent months, Zimbra deployments have more than doubled in higher education. For Exchange and Lotus Domino/Notes VARs serving higher education, it might be time to give Zimbra a look.

In the opening keynote of the Gartner's IT Infrastructure, Operations & Management Summit earlier this month, research firm's Vice President & Distinguished Analyst Thomas Bittman noted that "should an ecosystem build up around Xen, they'd be serious competition for VMware. But they're not there yet."

It all started last Tuesday, when yet another debate on the merits of applying the upcoming General Public License (GPL) version 3 to the Linux kernel was raised — again — on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML). For those who don't follow the LKML, it's a high-volume list where Linux kernel developers discuss and debate various technical aspects of the ongoing process of coding the kernel.

Joe Panettieri (The VAR Guy) submits: Initially, I was skeptical about Dell's (DELL) decision to sell selected consumer PCs with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed. But after a few days of testing, I'm a skeptic no more. And I'm not alone. Dell insiders tell me that the Ubuntu PCs, introduced in late May, are selling well -- though they decline to share exact sales figures with me.

With this year's New York Senate and Assembly session now ended, local voting activists are chalking up a victory for the public at the expense of Microsoft Corp. and the e-voting industry.

Mozilla and Google are collaborating on an effort to make web applications work offline. Firefox 3 will be the first internet browser to offer offline web application support when it launches at the end of this year.

IBM anticipates that the enhanced EAL4 security certification earned by Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 5 earlier this month will further its adoption by businesses and government entities worldwide.

When planning a virtual deployment, you have a lot to consider: which servers, which workloads, which processes and more. Return on investment and total cost of ownership (TCO) often lead the charge. Security is often an afterthought, and nearly always relegated to the back seat.

The press release started with the words, "Answering the call for an open source option from Information Technology professionals, Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU) announced today that businesses will soon be able to operate QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions® from Linux servers. It is the first time the company has made one of its products available to users of open source systems." Except QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions itself is not now and may never be open source. And even though a Linux version of the server software is now available for Linux, you will still need Windows on your desktops to use it.