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NewsVac: News from around the Web
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Bloomberg mistakenly publishes Steve Jobs obituary
1 hour, 21 minutes ago
An electronic gaffe at news outlet Bloomberg mistakenly sent an incomplete obituary for Apple CEO Steve Jobs over the wire on Wednesday afternoon, and a tipster promptly sent the soon-retracted file to gossip blog Gawker. -
Brazil's love of Linux
3 hours, 21 minutes ago
Walk into the Ponto Frio electronics store here, which proudly displays a penguin-shaped logo, and you will find a healthy supply of Linux PCs alongside the usual Windows machines. -
Local User Management in FreeNAS
5 hours, 21 minutes ago
In general, once the FreeNAS server is configured and running, it doesn't really need much attention, it should just work. However, there are lots of different features which can be configured. In this article by Gary Sims, we will see how user management is done in FreeNAS. -
Adium 1.3 Provides Facebook Chat, Many Bug Fixes
5 hours, 51 minutes ago
Adium, an open-source instant-messaging client for OS X, has released its latest version (1.3). Adium, like the Pidgin IM client, makes it possible to use a single IM program, rather than run multiple clients simultaneously for AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and several other networks. Adium's latest release includes support for the Facebook IM client, providing desktop access to this otherwise Web-only communications channel. -
Three Ways That Open Source Could Benefit from Business 101
6 hours, 21 minutes ago
This post from Matt Asay on whether open source needs consolidation asks an interesting question, and some of the comments that came in on it were interesting. This comment caught my eye: "No. Open source does not need consolidation. Open source needs product managers." Product managers, of course, drive improvements in commercial and proprietary software products, and listen carefully to what businesses need. At the end of our recent interview with Sun Microsystems' Ken Drachnik, regarding Sun's GlassFish app server, he also called for business synergy to advance open source projects. Here are three ways that open source projects can benefit from a bit of Business 101. -
Xen.org Delivers Version 3.3 of the Xen Hypervisor
6 hours, 51 minutes ago
Xen.org, which is behind the open source Xen virtualization project, is out with its new Xen 3.3 engine. You can download it now, and grab a PDF datasheet as well. Xen 3.3 is faster and more scalable than previous versions, and has better graphics capabilities. It targets more types of chipsets--from supercomputing to handheld chipsets. Yes that's right, handhelds. The new Xen is smaller than ever. What else is under the hood? -
Ubiquity: Mozilla's Take on a Web Command Line
7 hours, 21 minutes ago
There's a lot of buzz right now about Ubiquity: Mozilla's attempt to explore command-based interaction within Firefox. Users of other command-oriented interfaces like QuickSilver or Enso, will feel right at home with Ubiquity: you activate it within your browser with a simple key combination, and then start typing. Depending on what you type, stuff happens. -
Turbocharge PuTTY with 12 Powerful Add-Ons
7 hours, 51 minutes ago
PuTTY is hands-down the best, free, and lightweight SSH client for Windows. I have provided list of 12 powerful PuTTY add-ons with screenshots, that will solve few shortcomings of the original PuTTY. Play around with these add-ons and choose the one that suites your need. -
gscan2pdf - Scan multiple Documents, import images to PDF & DjVu
8 hours, 21 minutes ago
gscan2pdf is a simple but a very efficient GUI to scan documents of multiple pages and convert them into PDFs or DjVu format. You can also import images from image files into PDF files and vice versa. gscan2pdf only takes two clicks are required to scan several pages and then save all or a selection as a PDF file, including metadata if required. -
Adium 1.3 Provides Facebook Chat, Many Bug Fixes
8 hours, 51 minutes ago
Adium, an open-source instant-messaging client for OS X, has released its latest version (1.3). Adium, like the Pidgin IM client, makes it possible to use a single IM program, rather than run multiple clients simultaneously for AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and several other networks. Adium's latest release includes support for the Facebook IM client, providing desktop access to this otherwise Web-only communications channel. -
Three Ways That Open Source Could Benefit from Business 101
9 hours, 21 minutes ago
This post from Matt Asay on whether open source needs consolidation asks an interesting question, and some of the comments that came in on it were interesting. This comment caught my eye: "No. Open source does not need consolidation. Open source needs product managers." Product managers, of course, drive improvements in commercial and proprietary software products, and listen carefully to what businesses need. At the end of our recent interview with Sun Microsystems' Ken Drachnik, regarding Sun's GlassFish app server, he also called for business synergy to advance open source projects. Here are three ways that open source projects can benefit from a bit of Business 101. -
Create time-availability maps with Perl and Google Earth
9 hours, 51 minutes ago
Nationwide and international teams and flexible work hours contribute to change in when and where teams work together. Time-availability maps provide a listing of who is most likely to be available for a certain hour in a certain location. Find out how to use Google Earth and a log of your communications to map and identify the time and place when availabilities match. -
Quebec government sued for buying Microsoft software
10 hours, 21 minutes ago
Facil wants ban on regulatory loophole that lets Quebec purchase proprietary software. -
ASUS Eee PC 901
10 hours, 51 minutes ago
Last year ASUS had christened the Eee PC as a cost-effective but well built sub-notebook that ended up being extremely popular with more people than just computer enthusiasts. The original Eee PC 700 series had shipped with Intel Celeron hardware, a solid-state drive, and a Xandros-based Linux distribution. These units have been selling extremely well but back in June ASUS had unveiled the Eee 901 as well as the Eee 1000 series. These newer models now use Intel Diamondville-based Atom CPUs, which we have been quite fond of for their technological advances. In this article we are providing our first look at the Eee PC 901 along with a few bits of information and sharing some of our plans for the Eee Linux testing in the near future. -
A real Space Oddity arrives at PC Pro
11 hours, 21 minutes ago
You may remember that, some time ago, I blogged about an interesting little computer curio called the Space Cube. Quite simply, it’s one of the smallest PCs in the world, with each side measuring around 2 inches square. I wrote that it looked cool, ran on a 300MHz processor and that it probably wouldn’t be sold outside of Japan, if at all. - More News
Linux.com : Features
Behind the doors of the Free Software Foundation
The purpose of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is probably obvious from its name -- but what does promoting free software mean in terms of everyday activity? Examining the roles of the organization shows how complex the FSF's advocacy role has become. It also reveals the range of services available to the free software community, and helps to explain how such a small group has had such a major influence on computer technology.
Make etexts pretty with GutenMark
Project Gutenberg, the online library of more than 25,000 free books, is a treasure trove for bookworms and casual readers alike, but turning electronic text files into a readable form is not as easy as it may seem. In theory, since etexts are just plain text files, you should be able to open and read them on any platform without any tweaking. In practice, however, this approach rarely works. Hard line breaks, for example, may ruin the text flow, making it virtually impossible to read the book on a mobile device. Another problem is that most books are stored as single files, so locating a particular chapter or section in a lengthy book can be a serious nuisance. Then there are minor but annoying formatting quirks, such as inconsistent handling of italicized text, use of straight quotes instead of smart ones, and so on.
LyX 1.6 is ready for release
This month saw the release of LyX 1.6 release candidate 1. Occupying a position somewhere between a word processor and a mark-up editor, LyX is designed to meet the needs of professional and academic writers by allowing them to focus on their content rather than formatting and layout. It achieves this by eschewing some of the WYSIWYG conventions of a word processor. We've covered LyX in the past, so this time we'll focus on the enhancements that the 1.6 release brings with it.
Four Twitter clients for Linux
Twitter is a social networking platform that keeps you in conversation by allowing you and your friends to follow each others' updates. The service lets users post and read 140-character updates, called tweets. With Twitter, you can do social networking on the fly, from your mobile phone or at your desktop, from a Web browser or a Twitter client. Twitter clients make the service more usuable by automatically checking for updates from your friends and allowing you to easily post your own updates. I tested four Twitter clients for Linux on a desktop running Ubuntu Hardy Heron.
Voiceroute execs talk about going (mostly) open source (video)
Voiceroute, a software PBX vendor, originally started as a proprietary software company but went (at least partly) open source earlier this year. In this video, CEO Ming Guang Yong says the company should have moved toward open source "a lot sooner," and explains why. He and CTO Navin Kumar also talk about some of the specific differences between their open source and proprietary versions, including how and where they draw the line between the two, and share their thoughts about dealing with open source developers and building a successful open source development community.
Inside the SFLC's "Practical Guide to GPL Compliance"
One of the goals of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) is to become a center for education in free and open source software (FOSS) legal issues. As part of this effort, the SFLC has already published "A Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects." Its latest effort in public education, released last week, is "A Practical Guide to GPL Compliance," a 15-page guide for FOSS projects on how to avoid violations of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and Lesser General Public License (LGPL). The guide is a practical summary of its subject, but its wording is unnecessarily legalistic, and its structure and omissions sometimes fall short of the goal of being a standalone reference.
Cisco buys PostPath, targets Microsoft Exchange
No one saw this coming. Cisco, the networking giant, announced today it was buying PostPath, maker of the Linux-based Exchange server replacement PostPath Server.
Easy file uploads with Droopy
Suppose someone wants to send you a large file. They could try to send it via email, but many email servers impose limits on file size. They could try sending it over during an instant messenger or Internet Relay Chat session, but that's slow, as the file actually gets transferred twice: once to the chat server, then to your machine. File transfer services like RapidShare and MegaUpload are fine, but not for confidential information. Of course, you could set up an FTP server on your box, but you don't want to leave that door open all the time. Luckily, there's now an easy solution: droopy.
PostPath: Enterprise-strength open source alternative for Exchange
For enterprise system administrators looking for interoperability with Microsoft Exchange, but not the high costs associated with it, PostPath email and collaboration server could be a smart business investment. Boasting interoperability with Exchange environments for a third of the cost, thanks to its use of the Postfix mail server and many other open source components, PostPath provides drop-in capability and compatibility with Exchange environments without the need for making changes to Outlook on the client side. Being compatible with Exchange means that it can be managed using Microsoft's Active Directory infrastructure. The latest version, PostPath v3.1.2, adds support for Blackberry Enterprise Server and ActiveSync, allowing you to use mobile devices to access your email.
A business built on open source, virtualization, and clouds
ReadyTechs provides network support services for companies that don't want the expense of hiring and caring for their own employees. Now CEO Gerry Libertelli says the company is using Linux virtualization to open a new income stream based on cloud computing.
Nepomuk and KDE to introduce the semantic desktop
If you follow technology trends, you have probably heard of the semantic desktop -- a data layer for annotating and sharing the information in your computer. But what you may not be aware of is that the semantic desktop is not a distant goal, but scheduled to arrive at the end of 2008. And, when it does, the idea will probably be implemented through the work done by the Nepomuk project, and, most likely, by KDE first.
Frag 'em in your own backyard with Sauerbraten
If you like first-person shooters, you'll love Sauerbraten. This open source game might not have the visual finesse of other FPSes, but what it lacks in the graphics department, Sauerbraten more than makes up for with its various single and multiplayer modes, including an experimental role-playing game mode, and a unique WYSIWYG in-game map editor. Sauerbraten blends the best of FPSes like Quake and Max Payne to give you a unique gaming experience.
CVL lets you tinker with HDR images on your GPU
If your desktop hardware includes a graphics processing unit (GPU), you can do some cool image processing with the CVL suite of tools, which includes in image viewer, an image tone mapper, and a command-line tool for non-interactive image processing.
A video tour of openSUSE 11 (with KDE 4 desktop)
SUSE has been around almost since the dawn of consumer-level desktop Linux, and openSUSE 11 upholds the SUSE reputation for having not just a wide range of available applications, but also excellent documentation and a fine user-to-user support community. For this video we chose the KDE 4.x desktop option. KDE 3.5x and GNOME are also available as defaults in openSUSE.
South American FOSS show is a big deal
Last week's 8th Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre (Free Software Regional Sessions) at the University of Belgrano in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was an opportunity for around 1,300 FOSS enthusiasts to share experiences, learn more, and have fun together.
Protecting your MySQL database from SQL injection attacks with GreenSQL
SQL injection attacks can allow hackers to execute arbitrary SQL commands on your database through your Web site. To avoid these attacks, every piece of data supplied by a user on a Web form, through HTTP Post or CGI parameters, or other means, must be validated to not contain information that is not expected. GreenSQL is a firewall for SQL -- it sits between your Web site and MySQL database and decides which SQL statements should and should not be executed. At least that's the idea -- in execution, I found some open doors.
Better bookmark tagging with HandyTag, Tagmarks, and TagSifter
The bookmark tagging feature introduced in Firefox 3 is not particularly difficult in use: when bookmarking a Web page, enter the tags you like into the Tags field of the bookmarking dialog window and you are pretty much done. Tagging provides a more flexible way of keeping track of bookmarks than traditional folders. The folder-based system provides an "either/or"-solution to filing bookmarks. For example, you could place a bookmark for an article about installing OpenOffice.org on Puppy Linux in either a Linux or OpenOffice.org folder, but not in both. With tags, you don't have this problem: you can assign as many tags as you like, so the bookmark becomes filed under several categories at the same time.
Sun's OMS Video codec project is a means to an end
Sun Microsystems is setting out to create an open source, royalty-free video codec. Given the considerable head start of well-known, royalty-free video codecs like Dirac and Theora, you might ask why the world needs another. The answer, according to Sun, is the process the company will use to develop it -- starting with a full-on, careful examination of the patent situation.
Open the door to team productivity with kablink
Organizations have many ways to connect, collaborate, and keep in touch with co-workers, team members, and colleagues -- which can lead to multiple logins and user accounts, services spread across the Web, or services that are simply not accessible to all team members on various types of devices. Kablink (formerly ICECore) recognizes that centralization and accessibility are major components to successful project collaboration, and its latest offering is worth a project leader's second look.
Ulteo Application System is innovative, easy, and a little buggy
Ulteo Application System is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Kubuntu and designed to work with the Ulteo Online Desktop service to provide you with an automatic offsite backup and file synchronization between live CD instances. It attempts to require as little user configuration and maintenance as possible, and provides several unique features that set it apart from being "just another distribution."
