Egy Andrej bugyrai

Open source reshaping services market

2005-01-10T11:11:00.000-08:00

Open source reshaping services market | CNET News.com: "The open-source movement has already rewritten the rules for how software is licensed and used. Now the computer services market is changing to keep up.

With the number of open-source products on the rise, there has been a surge in services offerings--such as consulting and support--designed specifically for open-source software like Linux, the Apache Web server and MySQL database.

Big companies looking for help in assembling new systems based on unfamiliar open-source programs are fueling a race among providers--some new, some holdovers from the dot-com boom and long before--to become the trusted name in open-source services"

Munich asks ministers to drop EU patent vote | The Register

2004-12-21T17:05:00.000-08:00

Munich asks ministers to drop EU patent vote | The Register: "The vote on the European Directive on software patents has, at the last minute, been moved to the afternoon session on the Agricultural and Fisheries Commission's meeting. The vote is now scheduled for around 3pm, Brussels time. The change in schedule follows a statement (pdf, in German) from the Mayor of Munich, calling on Germany's minister to have the directive taken off the agenda altogether. Mayor Christian Ude said he can see no reason for the Council to proceed with such haste."

Building Linux Monitoring Portals with Open Source

2004-12-21T17:04:00.000-08:00

Building Linux Monitoring Portals with Open Source: "Faced with an increasing number of deployed Linux servers and no budget for commercial monitoring tools, our company looked into open-source solutions for gathering performance and security information from our Unix environment. There are many open-source monitoring packages to choose from, including Big Sister and Nagios to name a few. Though some of these try to provide an all-in-one solution, I knew we would probably end up combining a few tools to obtain the metrics we were looking for. This article is meant to give a general overview of the steps in building a monitoring solution. Take a look at the demo here which is a scaled down model of our production monitoring portal."

Using Open Source Software To Compete With The “Big Guys”

2004-12-20T15:34:00.000-08:00

Using Open Source Software To Compete With The “Big Guys”: "One of the most frequent questions I am asked, or read about lately, is how to look professional enough to compete with the big guys.

Everyone seems to want to look good while being comparable in offerings to the market leaders and their dynamically driven content web sites, but that's not always such an easy thing to do on a start-up budget. In truth, it's not even such an easy thing to do on a semi-established budget with a company established for a couple years, unless you know where to look and how to do it. Business owners surf the competition, see brilliant looking web sites with all the bells and whistles, and become somewhat bewildered at how to keep up or compete. Most of the big guys know the value of forums, regularly updating content, community building, and contributing writers, but how does the new guy keep up with such large promotional software budget wielding companies already entrenched in the market? Enter our superhero, the open source software community. "

Wal-Mart Breaks Price Barrier with $498 Linux Laptop Running Linspire

2004-12-20T15:27:00.000-08:00

Wal-Mart Breaks Price Barrier with $498 Linux Laptop Running Linspire: "Walmart.com has released the $498 Balance laptop, which runs the Linux-based operating system Linspire. The laptop comes fully equipped with the operating system, Internet suite, and Microsoft-file compatible office suite, and can be used with both dial-up modems and broadband connections. The $498 price does not require coupons or rebates and can be purchased immediately at http://www.linspire.com/498.

Wal-Mart and Linspire worked together to offer a laptop that would give customers the best user experience at the lowest price possible. The Balance notebook is the lowest-priced laptop currently on the market to include a complete operating system and office suite -- comparable machines cost hundreds more even without an office suite or software included."

NewsForge | Site Review: Loads of Linux Links

2004-12-20T14:04:00.000-08:00

NewsForge | Site Review: Loads of Linux Links: "Imagine a Web site that has over 4,000 links to sites of interest to Linux enthusiasts. Forget about dead links, because this site would be vigilantly maintained by a small group of people totally committed to the work of providing useful content. Instead, expect fresh links several times a week with handy accessories like quick links to related pages. That site already exists. Loads of Linux Links (LOLL) lives at Sourceforge.net as a GPLed software project. Andrew Willard and Barbara Irwin of the Victoria Linux Users Group in Canada maintain LOLL. They originally provided the site as a service to the VLUG only, but "in the true spirit of Linux," they decided to share it with the entire community. LOLL is a huge bookmark file that Irwin and Willard add to by evaluating visitor-submitted sites and by scouring the Web themselves. The team uses a cool little program called bk2site, which takes a Netscape bookmark file and transforms it into a "Yahoo-like" Web site, including a news blog.

Linux Opinion: An Open Letter to a Digital World (LinuxWorld)

2004-12-19T07:20:00.000-08:00

Linux Opinion: An Open Letter to a Digital World (LinuxWorld): "Summary
As a Linux desktop user himself, system administrator Chris Spencer did not relish having to clean up his wife's infected Windows PC after it had become compromised. By the time he'd solved the immediate problem, Spencer had become so fed up with spyware, trojans, viruses, and spam, that he decided it was time to write a letter to the world. It's a simple message: it's time to switch from Windows to Linux. 'The letter serves as a guide,' Spencer explains, 'taking you through some of the history of Microsoft right up to this present day.'"

Commentary: Why OpenOffice.org?

2004-12-18T12:40:00.000-08:00

Commentary: Why OpenOffice.org?: "Although I have regularly used Microsoft Office in the past, I haven't even had it installed on my system for over a year. This is despite completing a thesis, working with legal documents, exchanging business documents, writing academic papers for publishing as well as creating software based presentations.
I have NOT needed MS Office to do any of these things. OpenOffice.org is adequate - it has
all the essential features, including style list functions for real publishing, document comparison capabilities and import/export abilities, a capable spreadsheet, and a presentation program that does its job while importing and exporting PowerPoint.
But it's not just that OpenOffice.org is "adequate" for the job. As a software developer and long time computer user, I think OpenOffice.org is superior in several important respects. I would like to describe these points, because I think that others will also understand the issues better when they recognize the implications for themselves:

Slashdot | Google Suggest Dissected

2004-12-18T11:12:00.000-08:00

Slashdot | Google Suggest Dissected: "Google suggest Javascript codedissected and rewritten for all of you web developers out there. Cool piece of web reverse-engineering!" Joel Spolsky astutely notes that this will raise the bar in terms of how people expect the "internets" to work.

InfoSecure Open Systems & Solutions Announces Open-Source Alternative to Oracle/PeopleSoft

2004-12-18T11:11:00.000-08:00

InfoSecure Open Systems & Solutions Announces Open-Source Alternative to Oracle/PeopleSoft: "InfoSecure Open Systems & Solutions announced today the release of technology and related services that enable the use of the open-source Compiere(TM) enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) application on the SAP-certified open- source MaxDB(TM) by MySQL database, providing a unique fully open-source alternative to Oracle/PeopleSoft. Compiere is the #1 Open Source ERP/integrated CRM software solution with 750,000 downloads. MySQL is the world's most popular open source database, with more than 5 million active installations. Support for Computer Associates' Ingres, MySQL 5.0 and other open-source databases will be available soon."

Slashdot | Linux Desktop Migration Cookbook from IBM

2004-12-17T14:53:00.000-08:00

Slashdot | Linux Desktop Migration Cookbook from IBM: "I was project leader for publication of this recent IBM Redbook, available for free download here: Linux Client Migration Cookbook: A Practical Planning and Implementation Guide for Migrating to Desktop Linux. At this point, I'm gathering input for what we could improve on, and what additional topics should be covered in a second version of the book. I realize this is a broad topic to cover in a rapidly changing environment. And because these books are developed by IBM there are some content limitations. Nonetheless, in the next version we want to continue making the book as useful as possible for anyone considering a migration to Linux on the desktop.

Sub300.com Announces the World's Lightest Linux Notebook Computer

2004-12-17T12:44:00.000-08:00

Sub300.com Announces the World's Lightest Linux Notebook Computer: "Desktop Linux options are lighter with the launch of Sub300.com's Ultralite Laptop. The Linux-only retailer is selling the world's lightest computer notebook at well under $1000, featuring the easy-to-use and capable Linspire operating system. Conventional laptops are too heavy and too expensive, yet handheld PDAs are too low powered. Sub300.com's Ultralite Laptop provides a lightweight, yet full-powered computer with a full-screen and full-size keyboard that you can take anywhere. At just 2.9 lbs, Sub300.com's Ultralite Laptop is featherweight, but weighs in with features such as Linux OS, a 1Ghz VIA processor, 256MB RAM, 40 Gig HD, Ethernet and a crisp 12.1' TFT display, plus USB 2.0 and PCMCIA slots to add the functionality of wireless networking and more."

Herald.com | 12/17/2004 | Key Biscayne teen is brain behind web browser

2004-12-17T07:08:00.000-08:00

Herald.com | 12/17/2004 | Key Biscayne teen is brain behind web browser: "After working for Netscape at age 14, Key Biscayne resident Blake Ross has become at the ripe old age of 19 the co-creator of a hot, new ultra-fast Internet browser called Firefox.

With its official version released just last month, Firefox has been downloaded more than 11 million times and is already the world's second-most used browser, though it is still far behind the preeminent Internet Explorer of Microsoft.

The free Firefox is hot because it works faster than Explorer and seems less prone to viruses, experts say. ''Microsoft's worst nightmare,'' Business 2.0, a tech publication, called it. The publication dubbed Ross a ``software prodigy.''"

Linux News: Open Source: Firefox Aims to Convert Masses with 'New York Times' Ad

2004-12-16T13:28:00.001-08:00

Linux News: Open Source: Firefox Aims to Convert Masses with 'New York Times' Ad: "Mozilla is already doing damage to mainstream players like Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Over the past month, the U.S. browser usage share of Firefox has grown by more than a third, according to the latest independent study from WebSideStory, a provider of on-demand Web analytics.The non-profit Mozilla Foundation has placed an ad in today's edition of the New York Times. The open-source advocacy organization is pleading its alternative case with a two-page spread that asks readers the direct question: "Are you fed up with your Web browser?"

Linux News: Open Source: Firefox Aims to Convert Masses with 'New York Times' Ad

2004-12-16T13:28:00.000-08:00

Firefox Community Underwrites New York Times Ad

2004-12-16T09:48:00.000-08:00

Firefox Community Underwrites New York Times Ad: "Spread Firefox reports that it ran a two-page ad in today's New York Times under written by 50,000 customer evangelists. The ad features the names of the thousands of people worldwide who contributed to the Mozilla Foundation's fundraising campaign to support last month's launch of the open source Mozilla Firefox 1.0 web browser. More information in this press release. "

NewsForge | Quickbooks: the missing link for small business Linux

2004-12-16T09:46:00.000-08:00

NewsForge | Quickbooks: the missing link for small business Linux: "Last week I was talking with a small business IT consultant who switches clients' servers to Linux (and Samba) all day long without any problems, but finds few clients interested in moving their desktops to Linux. The reason? 'QuickBooks,' he said. While there are many small business accounting packages that happily run on Linux, including GnuCash, Quasar, SQL-Ledger, and AccPac, QuickBooks dominates this market. And its loyal users don't want to switch to another package even if it's just as good as -- or possibly better than -- QuickBooks.
My consultant friend pointed out that OpenOffice.org Calc -- the OOo spreadsheet function -- can handle most small business bookkeeping and accounting tasks in the hands of a skilled spreadsheet user. But he also noted that most small business people are not spreadsheet experts. Not only that, those who use QuickBooks are used to the way QuickBooks does things and are reluctant to change."

Linux Market to Exceed $35 Billion by 2008

2004-12-15T05:32:00.000-08:00

Linux Market to Exceed $35 Billion by 2008: "he Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a global consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux in the enterprise, today announced the completion of a global Linux market share and forecast study conducted by market research firm IDC that predicts the overall market revenue for desktops, servers, and packaged software running on Linux will exceed $35 billion by 2008. The new study presents a measurement of shipments and the installed base of servers and PCs running Linux that takes into consideration Linux shipped with new hardware deliveries, Linux running aboard redeployed systems, and instances where Linux is used as a guest operating system. When this expanded view of the marketplace is considered, the resulting server market for shipments and redeployments with Linux is increased by 36% over net new shipments in 2004."

Whitehall denies backing US-style software patents - Computing

2004-12-15T03:28:00.000-08:00

Whitehall denies backing US-style software patents - Computing: "The UK government yesterday flatly denied that it has backed controversial plans to impose a US-style patent system on software developers.

However, seemingly at odds with the denial, Minister for Science and Innovation Lord Sainsbury outlined the government's 'firm commitment to a patent system which fosters and supports innovation in all areas of technology, including inventions which rely on software'.

He insisted that the proposed European directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions, which has attracted widespread and bitter criticism from leading software developers including Linux creator Linus Torvalds, will not have an adverse impact on the software market.

According to Whitehall, the patent initiative will particularly help in relation to open source software by helping to support a strong and vibrant technology-based industry."

Debian group encourages female developers: Builder AU: Program: At Work

2004-12-14T16:46:00.000-08:00

Debian group encourages female developers: Builder AU: Program: At Work: "The number of female developers working on Debian is set to rise in the next few months thanks to the work of Debian Women.

The Debian Women group, which was set up in March this year to encourage the participation of women in Debian's future development, is already making progress in encouraging women to apply to be Debian developers, it says.

Helen Faulkner, a member of the Debian Women group, said there are few female Debian developers at the moment -- mirroring the situation across the software development sector as a whole.

'Debian is way male-dominated,' said Faulkner. 'There are something like 1,000 Debian developers and we know of only three of those that are women.'

But she hopes this will change in the near future as there are nine women, including Faulkner, who are applying to become Debian developers. Others have expressed an interest in following suit, and the Debian Women group hopes to make more progress narrowing the gender gap over time."

Security research suggests Linux has fewer flaws | CNET News.com

2004-12-13T18:57:00.000-08:00

Security research suggests Linux has fewer flaws | CNET News.com: "The Linux operating system has many times fewer bugs than typical commercial software, according to an upcoming report.

The conclusion is the result of a four-year research project conducted by code-analysis company Coverity, which plans to release its report on Tuesday. The project found 985 bugs in the 5.7 million lines of code that make up the latest version of the Linux core operating system, or kernel. A typical commercial program of similar size usually has more than 5,000 flaws or defects, according to data from Carnegie Mellon University.

'Linux is a very good system in terms of bug density,' said Seth Hallem, CEO of Coverity, a San Francisco company that makes flaw-detection tools for software written in C and C programming languages."

Map24

2004-12-13T17:58:00.000-08:00

Map24 is the interactive mapping portal, driven by the unique internet mapping technology MapTP(TM). Yes, it's true: we love maps. And maybe this is the reason of the great success. Our server farm of more than 400 processors provide an incredible amount of many millions of maps to the internet audience.

We're sure: once you've tried it out, you will never use a different service.

Top 10 software innovations of 2004

2004-12-13T17:47:00.000-08:00

Top 10 software innovations of 2004
And the #1 software innovation - Mozilla Firefox - Find as you type.
Once you "get" it, you won't accept any other methods of searching text, particularly IE's search feature (Ctrl+F3). Just start typing and the browser will locate the words for you. You can fine tune the feature to your liking by making it search for either links only or text and links both. This feature was available in late 2003 (when Firefox was known as Firebird) as well, but it has now nicely matured and just feels natural.

Go Open Source - Online SA Open Source Community

2004-12-13T16:31:00.000-08:00

Go Open Source - Online SA Open Source Community: "The Go Open Source campaign is a South Africa wide campaign aimed at raising the awareness of open source software (OSS), primarily amongst non-specialist IT users. The message of the campaign is that of choice: the advantages of OSS aside, there is an overwhelming number of people who do not even know that this option exists and is accessible to them.

Open source software is applicable in all aspects of IT usage, from specialist software development initiatives to home usage to serving the IT needs of large corporates and ISPs. Open source software, due to its inherent openness, also offers unique learning as well as business opportunities. Particularly powerful in developing countries such as South Africa, OSS has the potential to leapfrog this country into a serious player in the competitive global market.

A group of organisations representing public, private and civil sectors have come together to promote, educate and provide access to what has been coined IT's best kept secret. This campaign will run over the next two years, through an extensive media campaign as well as other projects that will help meet the objectives of the campaign."

Swarmstreaming: Swarming Downloads Evolved

2004-12-13T15:25:00.000-08:00

Swarmstreaming: Swarming Downloads Evolved: "Swarmstreaming: Swarming Downloads Evolved

I'm proud to finally unveil swarmstreaming our third generation of swarming algorithms that are designed for the fastest downloads of web content and multimedia without any special server software or silly .swarm files. This is probably our most exciting advancement since the original invention of swarming.

The technology improves swarming by ensuring that the bytes that the user wants next are scheduled to be received next. So if they're playing back a video file, the bytes from the front of the file will be received first. If the user (or application) skips forward to the middle of the file, the bytes at the middle of the file will be prioritized. Thus, unlike first generation swarming systems like Swarmcast or Bittorrent, you don't have to wait for the entire file to download to do something useful with it!.
slashdot:Evolving Swarms with Swarmstreaming"

More Open Source for Sun in 2005

2004-12-13T09:20:00.000-08:00

More Open Source for Sun in 2005: "Sun Microsystems (Quote, Chart) is planning to open source more than just its Solaris operating system in the coming year, executives said Friday.

Jonathan Loiacono, Sun's executive vice president of software, said the Santa Clara, Calif.-based systems company is planning on releasing code from some of its enterprise software products to the open source community in the same way it has done in the past with Java-enabled projects like Project Looking Glass and Java 3D."

TCO study: Linux wins again

2004-12-12T18:46:00.000-08:00

TCO study: Linux wins again - Breaking - http://www.smh.com.au/technology/: "An updated Linux vs Windows TCO study has found that a 250-seat company can end up saving 36 percent if it were to equip its users with the open source operating system and applications that run on it.

The study, by Melbourne-based open source firm Cybersource, found that even use of a commercial Linux distribution such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, would result in 27 percent lower costs.

The study was first issued in April 2002. 'We have now updated this report to accommodate the changes in both platforms. We have also extended the model to increase its relevance and accuracy,' said Con Zymaris, chief executive officer of Cybersource."

Linus Torvalds Leads Over Tim Berners-Lee, Dennis Ritchie, and RMS (LinuxWorld)

2004-12-11T18:05:00.000-08:00

Linus Torvalds Leads Over Tim Berners-Lee, Dennis Ritchie, and RMS (LinuxWorld): "Currently the leading ten are as follows (but it is changing by the hour as votes come in):

1. Linus Torvalds: 'Benevolent dictator' of the Linux kernel
2. Alan Turing: Mathematician; author of the 1950 paper 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence'
3. Dennis Ritchie: Creator of C and Coinventor of Unix
4. Richard Stallman: Free software movement's leading figure; founder of the GNU Project
5. Tim Berners-Lee: 'Father of the World Wide Web' and expectant father of the Semantic Web
6. Ken Thompson: Coinventor of Unix
7. Bjarne Stroustrup: The designer and original implementor of C
8. Brian Kernighan: One of the creators of the AWK and AMPL languages
9. Bill Joy: Cofounder and former chief scientist of Sun; main author of Berkeley Unix
10. Guido van Rossum: Author of the Python programming language"

Result for the fight between linux and microsoft

2004-12-11T06:16:00.000-08:00

Result for the fight between linux and microsoft: "Number of results on Google for the keywords linux and microsoft:

linux
(201 000 000 results)

versus

microsoft
(200 000 000 results)

The winner is: linux

JBoss Has Visions of JEMS

2004-12-10T16:38:00.000-08:00

JBoss Has Visions of JEMS: "JBoss officials are set to announce Monday a re-branding effort to portray the company's offering as a whole middleware platform, not just the application server.

Information on the JBoss Enterprise Middleware System (JEMS) is already available on its site; the marketing effort is essentially the fact that their platform is the sum of all the separate projects it's a part of today.

JEMS is currently made up of 12 individual open-source projects: JBoss Application Server, EJB 3.0, Hibernate, Javassist, JBoss AOP, JBoss Cache, JBoss IDE, JBoss jBPM, JBoss Mail, JBoss Portal, JGroups and Tomcat.

The Atlanta-based company's work, and business model, has grown beyond the open-source application server that first put the company on the map. While still popular -- the JBoss Application Server has been downloaded more than five million times -- the company has expanded its professional open source support to include several other open source projects, as well as their own in-house projects.

'The idea is to change the idea of the name expectation from JBoss the application server to JBoss the JEMS middleware platform in the professional open source methodology,' said Marc Fleury, JBoss chairman and CEO."

HP Embraces Open Source as Well as Linux

2004-12-10T05:59:00.000-08:00

HP Embraces Open Source as Well as Linux: "Efrain Rovira, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s worldwide director of Linux marketing, wants one thing perfectly clear: HP is taking Linux very seriously.

"Linux is a very important customer trend that goes beyond the operating system. Customers want to do a lot more with less money," Rovira said. "We understand that, so we've made Linux one of our three key operating systems: Windows, Unix and Linux."

HP's open-source plans aren't limited to Linux, though. The company recently partnered with open-source middleware vendor JBoss Inc. and database vendor MySQL AB.

"One of the areas where customers are doing more with less is in J2EE [Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition] application servers," Rovira
said about the JBoss deal. "One server trend is Linux growth at the edge, but we're starting to see customers experimenting with the J2EE and the enterprise DBMS."

Low-cost computing opens up

2004-12-10T05:28:00.000-08:00

Low-cost computing opens up
More than 60 European open source service providers are uniting to form the Open Source Consortium - an independent reference point to give an unbiased "proprietary-vendor free" voice for all organisations deploying or contemplating the open-source alternative.

The consortium was borne out of a fusion of the open-source movement and prime-mover demand from areas such as the public sector aims to bring impartial clarity to the debate.

Speakers at the consortium’s launch event at the NCC included Mark Taylor, OSC executive director; John H Terpstra, co-founder of the Samba Team and founder of the Open Standards Alliance; Bob Griffith, international secretary Socitim and Graham Taylor, programme director, OpenForum Europe.

Linux Security HOWTO

2004-12-10T03:19:00.000-08:00

Linux Security HOWTO: "This document is a general overview of security issues that face the administrator of Linux systems. It covers general security philosophy and a number of specific examples of how to better secure your Linux system from intruders. Also included are pointers to security-related material and programs. Improvements, constructive criticism, additions and corrections are gratefully accepted. Please mail your feedback to both authors, with 'Security HOWTO' in the subject."

heise online - Administration of Spanish region to use Linux for its health care system

2004-12-08T05:21:00.000-08:00

heise online - Administration of Spanish region to use Linux for its health care system: "In the next four years the giant US computer group IBM will help the Spanish autonomous region of Extremadura migrate the procedures (business and otherwise) related to its health-care system to Linux-based solutions. These developments would affect 14,000 employees of the Spanish health-care organization Servicio Extremeno de Salud (SES) working in 14 hospitals, 107 health-care centers and some 300 local health information centers, IBM declared."

Open Source Middleware: JBoss Aiming High With New Technical Advances (LinuxWorld)

2004-12-08T05:19:00.000-08:00

Open Source Middleware: JBoss Aiming High With New Technical Advances (LinuxWorld): "JBoss, in an ever-increasing effort to position itself as the preeminent open source architecture solution, introduced several important technical advances, among its federated open source projects. The advances are designed to develop its open source middleware stack.

The company will be showcasing all these various advances at its upcoming JBoss World 2005 user conference. It's scheduled to take place at the Omni/CNN Center in Atlanta, Ga., March 1-2, 2005. JBoss architects and developers will provide insight not only into this current crop of products, but will offer insight into upcoming innovations.

Releases and updates from the past couple months include, EJB 3.0 Preview 2, which concentrates on API simplifications defined by earlier versions of the EJB spec.; JBoss AOP, another device to simplify development, that uses an aspect-oriented framework in concert with object-oriented programming (OOP) to create cross-cutting, declarative services to object-oriented POJOs."

Venezuela Embraces Linux and Open Source Software, but Faces Challenges

2004-12-08T02:55:00.000-08:00

Venezuela Embraces Linux and Open Source Software, but Faces ChallengesVenezuela’s government is quickly moving towards the adoption of Open Source software, in a bid to save money and move towards technological independence.

"This follows the principle of national scientific independence, so that we do not depend on privately owned software. If knowledge does not have owners, then intellectual property is a trap set by neo-liberalism,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said last September when he announced to be working on a decree to adopt Open Source software in the public administration.

However, different government entities are not waiting for a decree, and are independently adopting this type of software on their own.

Technology News: Open Source: IBM Offers New Digital Media Framework to Rival Microsoft

2004-12-07T16:39:00.000-08:00

Technology News: Open Source: IBM Offers New Digital Media Framework to Rival Microsoft
IBM (NYSE: IBM) Latest News about IBM has announced a new digital media framework that it claims will enable companies to create, manage and distribute rich-media content faster, easier and at a lower cost.
The firm has teamed up with Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) Latest News about Adobe, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Latest News about Apple and Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) Latest News about Cisco Systems for the framework, which is based on open standards and designed to offer a cheaper alternative to Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft proprietary systems.
It already supports open digital media standards such as Java Latest News about Java, MPEG, XML, Linux Relevant Products/Services from Sybase ASE Linux Express Edition – FREE and Web services, and more will be added.
IBM said that the wide range of standards supported within the framework gives businesses the opportunity to select applications that best fit specific needs independent of existing or de facto systems.

Linux puts another financial feather in its cap - Computerworld

2004-12-07T15:44:00.000-08:00

Linux puts another financial feather in its cap - Computerworld: "One of Germany's biggest financial services companies has migrated its core Web services infrastructure to Linux -- a fresh example of how the operating system is making its way into more important enterprise applications.

Plus Finanzservice GmbH, which provides services such as customer loyalty cards to clients including H&M and Ikea International AS, migrated from the Sun Solaris operating system to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, at a 30% less than a Solaris system would have cost, Red Hat Inc. said on Thursday. The Linux system powers Plus Finanzservice's online service for processing customer enquiries and requests, using a custom-built application. The company migrated to a four-node cluster of dual-processor Dell systems accessing a storage-area network, with clustering controlled by an Oracle 9i Real Application Server (RAC) database. The entire production environment is mirrored in an external data center that can take over from the production system in 10 minutes, said Dirk Kissinger, a Red Hat marketing manager."

Slashdot | Profiting from Open Source Software

2004-12-07T15:20:00.000-08:00

Slashdot | Profiting from Open Source Software: "Alex Salkever has written an inspiring and Linux-friendly piece about Martin Roesch-- how he went from writing open-source software to building a multimillion dollar company. Excerpt: 'Sourcefire is one of a growing number of small software players that have built new businesses around open-source code. Their business models contain various mixes of proprietary and open-source software components and span the software gamut, from other security companies such as Tripwire to database outfits such as MySQL and desktop-computing offerings like Xandros. Most are still small, with revenues well under $50 million.'"

A Modest Player in Open Source

2004-12-06T16:41:00.000-08:00

A Modest Player in Open Source: "Martin Roesch was already an open-source legend before his software became the industry standard for network-intrusion detection. A security luminary and widely quoted source on protecting networks, Roesch had worked at computer-security jobs for the Pentagon and phone company GTE before it became part of Verizon (VZ ). In 1998, as a weekend exercise, he authored an open-source program called Snort, designed to examine data traffic coursing over a network and sound an alarm if hackers are trying to break in. Snort quickly became popular among computer-security geeks Like Linux guru Linus Torvalds, Roesch built a devoted retinue of followers, who contributed code fixes and other crucial assistance that, in a virtuous cycle, further improved Snort. Anyone could look at the software's underlying code, but reselling Snort was proscribed under the rules of its open-source license. All told, Snort was a textbook open-source project with rapid technology advances driven by broad collaboration -- and Roesch directed the project with a light, firm, but relatively egoless touch."

IDC: Linux server sales to hit US$9.1 billion in 2008

2004-12-06T16:32:00.000-08:00

IDC: Linux server sales to hit US$9.1 billion in 2008: ZDNet Australia: News: Hardware: "Sales of servers using Linux will grow faster than the overall market at least through 2008, when customers will spend US$9.1 billion for machines using the open-source operating system, market researcher IDC forecast on Monday.

Revenue from Linux servers is expected to grow annually at 22.8 percent, compared to 3.8 percent for the overall server market, IDC said.

In addition, Linux servers should account for 25.7 percent of server unit shipments in 2008, up from 15.6 percent in 2003, IDC said.

"

NewsForge | Site review: Libervis.com

2004-12-06T15:35:00.000-08:00

NewsForge | Site review: Libervis.com: "From a village near Zagreb, Croatia, comes Libervis.com, a Free Software-oriented site that seeks to build a "community center" that welcomes all people interested in Free Software, whether "supporters of the pragmatical open source ideology or pure free software ideology." Daniel Orsolic, the site's owner, admits he falls squarely into the second category. He's a Free Software guy. But he is always careful to insert in parentheses the phrase "open source" as an alternative whenever he writes about the movement Richard Stallman is famous for spearheading.
I expect a Free Software site to include deeply intellectual material just because of the people I've met who are associated with the ideology. Those people are almost spiritual in their quest to enlighten the world about the merits of Free Software. Some of the stuff here meets that expectation, like "About the Potential of E-democracy," an essay by José Monserrat Neto of the Universidade Federal de Lavras (UFLA) in Brazil."

Over 1 bln online in 2005 > Internet usage > IT Facts

2004-12-06T04:04:00.000-08:00

Over 1 bln online in 2005 > Internet usage > IT Facts: "Clickz Stats published a detailed table on online populations in different countries. According to Clickz Stats, who refers to Computer Industry Almanac, 934 mln people worldwide are online in 2004. 1.7 bln will be online in 2005, 1.21 bln by 2006, 1.35 bln by 2007. In United States 188.5 mln users are online, the other leading countries are UK (33.11 mln), South Korea (31.67 mln), Russia (21.23 mln), Japan (78.05 mln), India (36.97 mln), Italy (25.53 mln), Germany (41.88 mln), France (25.47 mln), China (99.8 mln) and Brazil (22.32 mln)."

InformationWeek > The Future Of Software > The Linux Kernel's Fuzzy Future > december 6, 2004

2004-12-06T02:16:00.000-08:00

InformationWeek > The Future Of Software > The Linux Kernel's Fuzzy Future > december 6, 2004: "What's next for Linux? That's harder to answer than you might think. Linux developers haven't created a technical road map that outlines future releases of their open-source operating system. At the same time, changes in the way Linux gets developed have compressed kernel updates into shorter cycles. The result: Linux is getting better faster, but it's unclear what shape it will take in the years ahead.

The current version of the Linux kernel, 2.6, was released 12 months ago by its keepers at the Open Source Development Lab. The logical successor would be Linux 2.7, but neither Linus Torvalds, who oversees Linux kernel development at OSDL, nor Andrew Morton, OSDL's lead Linux kernel maintainer, are predicting what Linux 2.7 will contain or when work will begin.

'We don't have a road map,' Morton says. 'The direction the kernel gets taken is determined by those who contribute [to it.]' That approach stands in contrast to the one taken by Bill Gates' team at Microsoft, where Windows releases aren't only planned, but publicly disclosed, for the next three years."

Linux wins major deal earning more credibility for open source

2004-12-06T01:42:00.000-08:00

Linux wins major deal earning more credibility for open source: "One of Germany's biggest financial services companies has migrated its core web services infrastructure to Linux - a fresh example of how the operating system is making its way into more important enterprise applications.

Plus Finanzservice, which provides services such as customer loyalty cards to clients including H&M and Ikea International, migrated from Sun's Solaris operating system to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, for 30% less than a Solaris system would have cost, according to Red Hat."

Linux server revenues up 52% in Q3 2004 > Servers > IT Facts

2004-12-06T01:00:00.000-08:00

Linux server revenues up 52% in Q3 2004 > Servers > IT Facts: "Gartner in worldwide server market analysis for Q3 2004 showed IBM leading the major Linux-based server vendors in revenue, and posting a growth of 85% in revenue from the same period in 2003. IDC had Linux revenue growing 52% YTY. IBM competitors HP and Dell lost market share in the same segment. A growth rate of 85% translates into $485 mln in Linux servers that IBM shipped last quarter, as opposed to one year ago when that number was only $262.2 mln. IBM's nearest competitor was HP, which posted $298 mln, followed by Dell with $184.1 mln."

Linux data infrastructure servers to grow at 46% a year > Servers > IT Facts

2004-12-06T00:57:00.000-08:00

Linux data infrastructure servers to grow at 46% a year > Servers > IT Facts: "With digital data traffic approximately doubling every year, demand for servers that manage and direct that traffic over telecom provider networks - Data Infrastructure Servers (DISs) - will grow geometrically as well, according to In-Stat/MDR.
However, since voice traffic growth is nearly flat, voice-centric
NEBS-Compliant Servers (NCSs), another segment of the teledatacom
server market, will be similarly flat over the next several years, the
high tech research firm says.

While thanks to Moore's Law servers are becoming more capable every
year, this doubling in performance every 18 months still lags behind
the demand for data - by about 26% per year - and this difference is
the main driver of shipment growth for DISs. Surprisingly, the highest
growth sub-sector in the TDS market is the bladed NCS market. In fact,
when you filter NCSs by form factor, non-bladed NCSs will actually
decline in revenues at -16% on an annual rate while the bladed NCSs
will surpass one bln dollars halfway through 2008. Similarly, when you
polarize DISs by form factor, non-bladed DISs grow at a rate only
slightly above overall server market expectations, even though they
will top ten bln within the next 5 years. But, the blade portion of
DISs will enjoy a 75% CAGR. While Sun has regained the top spot of the
overall TDS and the NCS markets, HP is the market share leader of the
DIS market. Also, even though UNIX will garner the largest share of
revenues over the entire forecast period, Linux will enjoy a 46% CAGR."

Open Source Funding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2004-12-04T15:04:00.000-08:00

Open Source Funding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The development of free software requires extensive resources. But where are these resources coming from if the final product is freely available?

The needed resources are provided by people and organizations that in some way profit (though not necessary in monetary terms) from free software.

The following table summarizes some of the funding sources for open source development and their motivations."

Arbitration committee election - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2004-12-04T14:46:00.000-08:00

Arbitration committee election - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Arbitration committee election
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Sorry, your first contribution was only 62 days ago. You need to have been contributing for at least 90 days to vote in this election.
;-)"

Slashdot | Sun Submits New License for Open Source Approval

2004-12-04T13:17:00.000-08:00

Slashdot | Sun Submits New License for Open Source Approval: "Sun has submitted their Common Development and Distribution License to the Open Source Initiative for approval as an Open Source license. It appears that this license is what Sun plans to release Solaris under
according to an article at news.com.com.com. Of particular note is:
'The CDDL is not expected to be compatible with the GPL, since it
contains requirements that are not in the GPL,' Claire Giordano of
Sun's CDDL team said in its submission."

Install XAMPP for easy, integrated development

2004-12-04T06:20:00.000-08:00

Install XAMPP for easy, integrated development
Open source stacks such as XAMPP from Apache Friends are simplifying open source development by making it easier to write and distribute applications in a stable and standardized environment. Traditionally, AMPP -- Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl -- have all been installed and configured as separate products. The trend of combining them into integrated middleware stacks promises to make open source development more competitive with J2EE™ application development, at least for low-end applications. In this article, you'll learn how to install, configure, and back up XAMPP on Mandrake Linux™ 10.0 and also how to configure and administer XAMPP, as well as how to install your own applications in an XAMPP environment.

Wikinews and the Growing Wikimedia Empire

2004-12-03T23:45:00.000-08:00

infoAnarchy || Wikinews and the Growing Wikimedia Empire: "After almost two months of deliberation and voting, the Wikimedia Foundation has now officially launched the Wikinews project in English and German editions. More languages will follow soon. Wikinews aims to be to news media what Wikipedia
is to encyclopedias: a free, comprehensive and, eventually, reliable
source of information, collaboratively created by volunteers around the
planet. Wikinews explicitly allows original reporting, making it
somewhat similar to Indymedia, while adhering to a strict Neutral Point of View policy."

Xandros Linux desktop hits Walmart.com

2004-12-03T23:20:00.000-08:00

Xandros Linux desktop hits Walmart.com: "Linux software maker Xandros has joined the growing number of open source software offerings on PC desktops at Wal-Mart's online store. Like other PCs available from Wal-Mart, the Xandros-powered systems don't come with a monitor, and range in price from US $200 to $600. The Xandros-powered PCs have 1.5 to 3 GHz AMD processors along with 128 to 256 MB of memory, CD-ROM or CD-RW-DVD-combo drives, 40 to 80 GB hard drives, and a comprehensive set of software based on Xandros Desktop Standard Edition v2.0."

� The long wait for Debian Sarge - does it really matter? | Open Source | ZDNet.com

2004-12-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

� The long wait for Debian Sarge - does it really matter? | Open Source | ZDNet.com
One of the nice things about open source is immediate availability. Let me give you an example… Reading the latest from Debian’s release team, it seems pretty clear that Debian Sarge (the next version of Debian, currently the "testing" distribution) won’t be officially released until sometime in 2005, if then. Not that
the official release date really means anything, since Sarge is already widely in use — perhaps moreso than Debian Woody, the current "stable" release that was officially released in July, 2002.

Because of the way the Debian project has structured their development process, Sarge is available to anyone willing to run the "testing" distribution on their server or desktop. It’s also open to any other project or business that wants to utilize the Debian distribution, or its packages.

Several Debian-based distributions, including Ubuntu, Xandros, ~~Lindows~~, er Linspire, Progeny Debian, Libranet and the insanely useful Knoppix all utilize Debian’s "testing" packages. If you’re using one of those distros, you’re running Debian.

Linux in Government: The Government Open Code Collaborative | Linux Journal

2004-12-03T07:40:00.000-08:00

Linux in Government: The Government Open Code Collaborative | Linux Journal: "As we celebrate the holiday season and prepare for the next round of legislation, a group of state and local governments has banded together to collect and distribute freely the costly software that normally runs taxpayers $100 billion annually. Called the Government Open Code Collaborative or GOCC.gov, this organization states that its members work together voluntarily to encourage "the sharing, at no cost, of computer code developed for and by government entities where the redistribution of this code is allowed".

In addition to state and local governments, the organization also encourages collaboration between public sector entities and non-profit academic institutions. With Web facilities hosted by the University of Rhode Island, GOCC.gov has a repository dedicated to hosting open-source software for download by any state or local government.

Firefox Declares War in Germany | Science & Technology | Deutsche Welle |

2004-12-03T02:24:00.000-08:00

Firefox Declares War in Germany | Science & Technology | Deutsche Welle |: "Over 2,400 Firefox fans donated money to pay for a full-page ad for the open source browser that appeared Thursday in a German newspaper, spearheading the battle in Europe against Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The ad, entitled 'FEUER!' (fire), for Mozilla's Firefox 1.0 Web browser appeared in the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).

'Hundreds of programmers jointly develop a revolutionary Internet browser,' the ad read. 'They volunteer their time and donate it to the whole world. Then 2,403 people and companies finance this advertisement to tell you: Firefox 1.0 is there.' All contributors were listed below."

Netcraft: Most Reliable Hosting Providers during November

2004-12-03T01:23:00.000-08:00

Netcraft: Most Reliable Hosting Providers during November: "During November all of the sites monitored experienced some failed requests, with New York Internet the most reliable site during the period, followed by Pair Networks.

Half of the top ten sites were running BSD based operating systems, with four running Linux"

High-end PowerPC chips gain 2.6-based Linux dev kit

2004-12-03T01:21:00.000-08:00

High-end PowerPC chips gain 2.6-based Linux dev kit: "TimeSys is shipping 2.6-based embedded Linux development kits for two high-end IBM PowerPC chips for telecommunications, imaging, and networking. The TimeStorm Linux Development Kits (LDKs) support IBM's 750FX and 750GX, and include a hardware-optimized kernel with advanced real-time capabilities, an Eclipse-based development environment, and a royalty-free runtime, the company says. "

Sun submits software licence to Open Source Initiative - ZDNet UK News

2004-12-03T01:20:00.000-08:00

Sun submits software licence to Open Source Initiative - ZDNet UK News: "Sun's Common Development and Distribution licence, which will apply to Solaris, has been submitted to the OSI for a decision on whether it can join the list of open-source standards - setting up a potential clash with Linux. Sun has quietly begun seeking official open-source status for a new software licence that likely will be used to govern its Solaris operating system.

But the licence may inhibit cross-pollination between Solaris and Linux -- a sacrifice Sun appears willing to make in its effort to attract developers and revitalise its version of Unix.

On Wednesday evening, ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com has learned, Sun submitted a description of its Common Development and Distribution licence, or CDDL, to the Open Source Initiative. The nonprofit group reviews licences and bestows official open-source status on those that meet the Open Source Definition requirements."

The magic that makes Google tick: ZDNet Australia: Insight: Software

2004-12-02T07:36:00.000-08:00

The magic that makes Google tick: ZDNet Australia: Insight: Software: "The numbers alone are enough to make your eyes water.

# Over four billion Web pages, each an average of 10KB, all fully indexed.
# Up to 2,000 PCs in a cluster.
# Over 30 clusters.
# 104 interface languages including Klingon and Tagalog.
# One petabyte of data in a cluster -- so much that hard disk error rates of 10-15 begin to be a real issue.
# Sustained transfer rates of 2Gbps in a cluster.
# An expectation that two machines will fail every day in each of the larger clusters.
# No complete system failure since February 2000.

It is one of the largest computing projects on the planet, arguably employing more computers than any other single, fully managed system (we're not counting distributed computing projects here), some 200 computer science PhDs, and 600 other computer scientists.

And it is all hidden behind a deceptively simple, white, Web page that contains a single one-line text box and a button that says Google Search."

'The Java Faster than C ' Benchmark Revisited

2004-12-02T07:33:00.000-08:00

'The Java Faster than C ' Benchmark Revisited: "There are lies, damn lies and Benchmarks'.
A while back I was Googling something and and happened across this comparison: The Java Faster than C++ Benchmark. Having witnessed the "real world" performance of comparable applications between the two languages, that phrase (along with a red flashing B.S.) kept popping into my mind as I reviewed the methodology and code used in that article. Digging a little further, I found out that the article was based primarily on code from the Great Computer Language Shootout, so changes made to the code, build settings, etc. here may apply to that code as well.

Also, I thought that GCC was really under-represented in the original article as well as a follow-up that featured the Intel compiler (where the author suggested GCC was a dog and C++ IO was slow). The follow-up article can be found here: Comparing C++ performance with Java.

Given that all three premises (Java is faster than C++, GCC is a dog and C++ IO is slow) are highly questionable from my experience at least, and apparently 'The Java Faster' article was 'featured' (given wide circulation) on Slashdot
I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit this series of benchmarks and post the results on the web for all to flame.

my Stuff and News International [mysan.de/international] - OSDL and Bull Cooperate on Open Source POSIX Test Suite

2004-12-02T07:29:00.000-08:00

my Stuff and News International [mysan.de/international] - OSDL and Bull Cooperate on Open Source POSIX Test Suite: "The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a global consortium of leading technology companies dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux (r) and Bull, a leading developer of servers and software for an open environment, today announced that OSDL, in cooperation with Bull, has integrated the Open POSIX Test Suite (OPTS) into its library of tests that run against new kernel builds."

Army to deploy robots that shoot | CNET News.com

2004-12-02T01:26:00.000-08:00

The hardware of Doom:
Army to deploy robots that shoot | CNET News.com: "Next year, the U.S. Army will give robots machine guns, although humans will firmly be in control of them.The Army next March will begin to deploy Talon robots from Waltham, Mass.-based Foster-Miller. The robots will be mounted with M240 or M249 machine guns, said a Foster-Miller spokesman. The units also can be mounted with a rocket launcher. Defense agencies have been testing an armed version of the Talon since 2003."

Foss-pdi Information Page

2004-12-01T13:14:00.000-08:00

Foss-pdi Information Page: "The Free and Open Source Software(FOSS) e-discussion, is being launched to debate on Policy and Development Implications of using FOSS and to build wider consensus on FOSS as an innovative Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) framework, which can be used to stretch the development dollar and dramatically scale up the impact of various interventions. This forum is a joint initiative of Bridges.org, (Cape Town, South Africa); Free and Open Source Software Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), (Nairobi, Kenya); OneWorld South Asia (OWSA), (New Delhi, India); UNDP-APDIP International Open Source Network (IOSN), (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia); UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP/UNDP), (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia). "

Embedded Linux advantages -- and challenges -- in a retail POS system

2004-12-01T13:12:00.000-08:00

Embedded Linux advantages -- and challenges -- in a retail POS system: "In 1998, restaurant point-of-sale (POS) vendor Squirrel Systems launched its next-generation restaurant management product, SquirrelONE. The architecture was based on a client/server model. After a significant technology assessment, Linux was selected as the client platform. However, the solution was not your vanilla, off-the-shelf Linux offering, as a number of constraints required a unique Linux solution. Along with obvious advantages, Linux presented unique challenges. Analyzing his experience of employing open-source software in commercial products, the author hopes his findings might help those wondering whether the use of Linux would make sense for them as well.

After starting operation in 1984, Squirrel Systems has emerged as a leading provider of POS restaurant management systems. Squirrel's customers consist of large multi-unit chains, fast casual, fine dining, cafeteria, clubs, hotel restaurants, airports, and the like. Squirrel's POS software runs on more than 50,000 terminals, installed in approximately 10,000 restaurants, hotels, and clubs worldwide. About one third of those terminals currently operate on a Squirrel-developed Linux implementation called Squirrel Embedded Linux (SEL), which was introduced to the industry in 1998. "

NewsForge | Live Linux security chat 4 p.m. - 5 p.m. EST today

2004-12-01T13:03:00.000-08:00

NewsForge | Live Linux security chat 4 p.m. - 5 p.m. EST today: "he panelists are Jay Beale, Brian Hatch, Paul Vixie, Lance Spitzner, and Dave Wreski. NewsForge editor Robin 'Roblimo' Miller is the moderator. Either connect to irc.linuxsecurity.com and join #LinuxSecurity or go to LinuxSecurity.com -- the chat's sponsor -- and use their Java chat applet. Transcripts will be available at LinuxSecurity.com tomorrow."

Slashdot | BusinessWeek On XORP vs. Cisco

2004-12-01T12:57:00.000-08:00

Slashdot | BusinessWeek On XORP vs. Cisco: "BusinessWeek is running this article talking about how XORP will take on Cisco's dominance in the router market. The article speculates that XORP could represent the next 'open-source rebellion.' One can only imagine the fallout within the telecommunications industry if an open-source project like this gained traction-- Cisco would not be the only giant to be slain."

Linux News: Open Source: Brazil Court Adopts Open-Source Software

2004-12-01T11:12:00.000-08:00

Linux News: Open Source: Brazil Court Adopts Open-Source Software: "Today, 14 of the court's 15 Cache databanks are already based on Linux platforms. The next step will be to migrate the court's administrative systems within a month. Full migration should be finished by February of 2005 and its success so far is attributed to the high level of Cache automation. Brazil's federal district and territories court (TJDFT) has decided to migrate to an open-source platform having implemented a database system supplied by local software firm InterSystems, according to a TJDFT statement.

TJDFT's migration is aligned with the current government's policy of stimulating the adoption of open-source technology.

The court automated its processes in 1997 using InterSystems' Cache databank solution with the help of its own team of developers. The tool permits judges, directors and appeals court judges to access processes remotely and update opinions or send procedures."

IBM strengthens Brazilian ties with open source training - Computer Business Review

2004-12-01T11:10:00.000-08:00

IBM strengthens Brazilian ties with open source training - Computer Business Review: "IBM Corp is to train almost a thousand government officials in Sao Paolo, Brazil in the management of Linux and open source software in a further strengthening of ties with the Brazilian public sector.
Under the terms of the agreement, IBM Brazil will train 980 Sao Paulo State Government professionals in the management of open source and IBM technologies on the Linux operating system over a 12-month period."

Data Warehousing Infrastructure: Linux Clusters for the Enterprise | Business intelligence, data warehousing and analytics editorial from DMReview

2004-12-01T11:09:00.000-08:00

Data Warehousing Infrastructure: Linux Clusters for the Enterprise | Business intelligence, data warehousing and analytics editorial from DMReview: "Traditionally, businesses needed a large initial investment to build a data warehouse that satisfied the requirements of a growing enterprise and generated the desired return on investment (ROI). As long as the projected ROI covered the cost, not even the capital-intensive proprietary hardware systems or large SMP servers were considered significant. But recently, a tough economy has forced businesses to look for additional value from their technology investments. That's why today many IT and business managers are focusing on total cost of ownership (TCO) rather than solely on ROI when it comes to defining what makes a data warehouse project successful.

Linux clusters are emerging as the de facto choice for providing enterprise-level scalability, performance and availability for data warehousing solutions at a low cost."

Apache may hire full-time, paid staff: Internet News: The Industry Standard

2004-12-01T10:31:00.000-08:00

Apache may hire full-time, paid staff: Internet News: The Industry Standard: "The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) may soon have some full-time, paid staff including an executive director, according to a board director of the Delaware foundation. The ASF currently runs on a volunteer model. 'We are at somewhat of a crossroads now in that we have grown so quickly,' said Brian Behlendorf, a co-founder and director of the ASF. '(The ASF) is starting to outstrip the ability for people who are volunteers to be able to keep up with it, and effectively manage it.'

Behlendorf, who is in Bangalore, India, this week for a Linux event, is also the chief technology officer of CollabNet Inc., a Brisbane, California, provider of on-demand, distributed software development tools.

The ASF was set up in 1999 as a not-for-profit enterprise to provide support for the Apache community of open-source software projects. The Apache software developer community, consisting of approximately 1,200 developers, works on about 20 projects, including the Apache HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) Server project, its initial undertaking. A board of nine voluntary members runs the ASF's activities."

Most CIOs would consider Linux for email - vnunet.com

2004-12-01T10:25:00.000-08:00

Most CIOs would consider Linux for email - vnunet.com: "Linux has gained further credibility in the enterprise after most IT managers said that they would consider the open source operating system as a platform for email.

Over half of respondents to a recent survey indicated that they would seriously consider switching to Linux messaging over the next two years, if there was no disruption to end users.

The independent study, undertaken by Osterman Research, also showed that over 80 per cent would consider switching to a web-based email client if it had the same functionality as current desktop clients.

"

Slashdot | Are Blogs the Future of Journalism?

2004-11-30T14:37:00.000-08:00

Slashdot | Are Blogs the Future of Journalism?: "ecently bloggers were part of the forces compelling Trent Lott to resign as Senate majority leader and Dan Rather to apologize to viewers on national television -- leaving many to ponder if blogs could someday supplant traditional journalism. More likely they'll become a 'fifth estate' keeping watch over mainstream media and politics, says Dan Drezner and Henry Farrell in Foreign Policy Magazine's current issue. So will the new media revolution be blogged? 'No,' says Anna Marie Cox, author of Wonkette, 'A revolution requires that people leave their house."

Linux News: Open Source: Venezuela's MED Saves $2.1 Million with Open Source

2004-11-30T12:57:00.000-08:00

Linux News: Open Source: Venezuela's MED Saves $2.1 Million with Open Source
Venezuela's education and sports ministry (MED) believes it has saved up to 4 billion bolivares (US$2.1 million) this year by implementing open-source platforms in its data center servers, according to information published by the government.

The ministry now uses servers running on open source operating systems for network management and web services as well as to store information on employees, vacations and vehicle access.
[...]
Open source would also play an important part in an MED program to install over 380,000 PCs in schools across the country at a cost of nearly US$400 million. Without open-source solutions, the ministry would have to spend a similar amount on licenses, Joa said.

Microsoft Order Cancelled by Beijing

2004-11-30T11:31:00.000-08:00

Business: NewsFactor Network - Business News for Technology Leaders - Microsoft Order Cancelled by Beijing: "Beijing's municipal government has stopped an order for MicrosoftRelevant Products/Services from Microsoft software, apparently giving in to public sentiment after nearly two weeks of fierce criticism within China about the deal.

Microsoft had won the software bid on November 17 to provide Beijing with operating systems and software packages.

Soon after the win, official complaints were lodged, noting that local governments would be opting for foreign software over domestically created products.

Chinese software companies whose products compete with Microsoft include open source-based Red Flag Software and Kingsoft."

Linux desktop beauty contest 2004.

2004-11-29T10:10:00.000-08:00

Linux desktop beauty contest 2004.

Does XORP Have Cisco's Number?

2004-11-29T08:52:00.000-08:00

Does XORP Have Cisco's Number?: "Atanu Ghosh wants to turn the data-networking world on its head. A prominent researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, Calif., Ghosh leads an ambitious project to build the next Internet traffic cop and, he hopes, the next open-source rebellion.

The project is called the Extensible Open Router Platform, or XORP. Its goal is to provide a free open-source software product that will route data through computer networks using cheap hardware and microprocessors from the likes of Intel.
XORP's first version was released in July, and heavier-duty versions are due in coming years. While it's hardly the first effort to make routing software in an open-source format, it may be the most promising, due to $3 million in funding from high-powered backers such as Intel, Microsoft (MSFT ), and the National Science Foundation."

NASA Revamps Its Storage Environment

2004-11-29T08:39:00.000-08:00

NASA Revamps Its Storage Environment: "NASA has just revamped the storage environment at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. This revamp consists of a new 450 TB storage network working in tandem with the massive Columbia supercomputer, which runs on Intel Itanium 2 and Linux.

'All of the storage is within one big SAN fabric,' said Bob Ciotti, Terascale Systems Lead at NASA. 'We now have 200 TB of data on Fibre Channel and 250 TB on SATA.'"

Open-source geeks are modern heroes, says think tank - ZDNet UK News

2004-11-29T08:18:00.000-08:00

Open-source geeks are modern heroes, says think tank - ZDNet UK News: "Coders who give up their spare time to contribute to open source projects are the virtual equivalent of lifeboat men, according to latest research from Demos The UK think tank will publish a report on Tuesday that will underline the importance of "Pro-Ams" -- amateurs who pursue a hobby or pastime, in many cases an all-consuming passion, to a professional standard.

Demos says that these kind of people have traditionally made a contribution to society through involvement with bodies such as lifeboat rescue services or The Samaritans, but that they have now branched out into less typical areas.

"Pro-Am astronomers have made significant contributions to our knowledge of the universe. And Pro-Am software programmers who are part of the 'open source' movement are providing the only real challenge to Microsoft's dominance of the personal computing market," said the report. Full report:The Pro-Am Revolution"

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Rise of the anoraks

2004-11-29T08:09:00.000-08:00

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Rise of the anoraks: "Anoraks, geeks, nerds - there's no shortage of insults for enthusiasts who take their interests just a bit too far. But a new report suggests these fanatics are a growing force in society.

Seb Potter is a hidden cog in the feverish global economic engine. The 27-year-old regularly gives large chunks of his leisure time to building 'open source' software."

Linux.com | CLI Magic: Ispell

2004-11-29T08:07:00.000-08:00

Linux.com | CLI Magic: Ispell: "Unless you are one of those who writes everything you write from inside one of those behemoth office-style word (or is it world?) processors, a fast, convenient, powerful, and stand-alone spell checker is a very hand thing to have around. Luckily for us in the Unix/Linux world, we've had one forever: it's called Ispell. Climb down out of that rodent-driven environment you spend too much time in for awhile, and I'll show you."

Slashdot | Doom 3 Now Supports Surround Sound

2004-11-29T08:05:00.000-08:00

Slashdot | Doom 3 Now Supports Surround Sound: "DOOM 3 v1.1.1286 for Linux has just been released. ALSA has finally been implemented so Linux gamers can finally play Doom 3 with surround sound! Along with surround sound support this release fixes a number of bugs. You can read Timo's release notes here. As usual the release is up on the idsoftware ftp server and there is a torrent."

WS-Reliability middleware released as open source

2004-11-29T08:04:00.000-08:00

WS-Reliability middleware released as open source: "Three proponents of the WS-Reliability standard late last week released messaging software based on the specification as open source"
Fujitsu Limited, Hitachi, Ltd., and NEC Corp. new middleware, called Reliable Messaging for Grid Services (RM4GS), ensures reliability in the exchange of Web services messages, the vendors said in a statement.

WS-Reliability, ratified this month as an OASIS standard, removes
the necessity that each application on a web services network guarantee
the reliability of the exchange. The new RM4GS software, for example,
provides a reliable messaging function that ensures messages are not
lost or duplicated in transmission.

GPL Could Put Heat on Microsoft

2004-11-29T04:59:00.000-08:00

GPL Could Put Heat on Microsoft
As eWEEK reported last week, the Free Software Foundation is working to revamp the GPL—the first such rewrite in 13 years. Eben Moglen, general counsel for the Boston-based FSF, who is co-authoring the new license with FSF founder Richard Stallman, has declined to say when Version 3 of the license will be ready.

"We need it to be right, and the community needs to be available and adopt it and make good out of it," Moglen told eWEEK.

Heaven Sent or a Hallucination? - New Linux Computer Manual Breaks Norms.

2004-11-29T04:57:00.000-08:00

PRESS RELEASE:Heaven Sent or a Hallucination? - New Linux Computer Manual Breaks Norms. - (Seattle Article)
Linux For the Rest of Us 2nd Ed. is a complete guide for beginners using Linux, without the debasing attitude of so many of today’s introductory manuals.

There are no condescending remarks, no haughty lines of text written to remind the reader how great the author is, and no extraneous material for a new user to weed through. Disappointed? This manual is strictly for novices who want to get started using Linux quickly and successfully.

Independent Media Center | www.indymedia.org | ((( i )))

2004-11-29T02:55:00.000-08:00

Independent Media Center | www.indymedia.org | ((( i ))): "Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth."

Cray Inc. Reports International Order Valued at $8 Million for Cray X1E and Cray XD1 Linux based Supercomputers

2004-11-29T02:49:00.000-08:00

Cray Inc. Reports International Order Valued at $8 Million for Cray X1E and Cray XD1 Linux based Supercomputers: "Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. today reported an order valued at approximately $8 million from an unnamed international customer for a Cray X1E(TM) supercomputer and a Cray XD1(TM) supercomputer. The two systems are scheduled to be installed in the first half of 2005. "
"Combining the extreme performance of the new Cray X1E system with one of the largest Cray XD1 Linux-based systems sold to date will provide this customer with a tremendous range of power and flexibility," added Ungaro.

2004-11-29T02:07:00.000-08:00

: Wired is giving away 750,000 copies of a CD with a difference: all the songs are included under a Creative Commons license which means that users can freely exchange the songs over the Internet via P2P (peer-to-peer) networks such as BearShare, Kazaa, LimeWire, Morpheus and Shareaza, among others. The songs are available as MP3 files on the Wired and Creative Commons websites.

Slashdot | 1994 BSD/Unix Settlement Released On Groklaw

2004-11-29T01:53:00.000-08:00

Slashdot | 1994 BSD/Unix Settlement Released On Groklaw:Groklaw has the newly-released-previously-secret 1994 Berkeley/UNIX Systems Laboratories settlement which gave rise to BSD4.4(Lite) (as pdf and text with commentary). This may have an impact on the SCO vs. Linux war.

Try Firefox from mozilla.org

2004-11-29T01:51:00.000-08:00

Try Firefox from mozilla.org: "Tired of Internet Explorer? Try Firefox from mozilla.org (head there to download Firefox 1.0).

This browser is free, it's open- source and it was developed by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation and a group of volunteers."
Mostly, it's been universally praised as a great browser alternative.

Firefox has a built-in popup blocker, includes tools to combat spyware and has Google Search built into its toolbar.

Main Page - NerdyPC

2004-11-29T01:45:00.000-08:00

NerdyPC is a project of the Wikinerds Community aiming to create a computer hardware review site and Information Technology knowledge base!

Linux: Everything for the DIY-ers

2004-11-29T01:08:00.000-08:00

Linux: Everything for the DIY-ers: "Many enterprises see platform migration as a death-defying leap over a perilous chasm. Some companies will take a chance after doing their sums, but many more will not budge an inch with the most enticing benefits.

If Linux is the platform that you plan to move to, support is probably the number one issue popping into your head, as the technology is notorious for its paucity of high quality support from vendors.

Apparel manufacturer Bossini can attest to this, but it is also proud to say that it has found ways to circumvent the problems.

In fact, the Hong Kong headquartered company, which runs retail stores in China, Taiwan, and Singapore, switched to Linux three years ago, and has found compelling reasons to stay faithful to the platform. Over time, it has even migrated more applications to it."

Tectonic -- Linux and open source news

2004-11-29T01:02:00.000-08:00

Tectonic -- Linux and open source news: "Karl Fischer takes a walk through the latest version of Gnome, version 2.8, to illustrate a few of the best new features of this very popular desktop environment."

Mozilla Firefox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2004-11-29T00:59:00.000-08:00

Mozilla Firefox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaMozilla Firefox is a free web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and hundreds of volunteers. Before its 1.0 release on 2004-11-09, Firefox had already garnered a great deal of acclaim from the media, ranging from Forbes to the Wall Street Journal. [1] [2] With over 5 million downloads in the first 12 days of its release and 6 million by November 24, Firefox 1.0 is one of the most-used free software (as defined by the FSF) applications among home users. The Firefox 1.0 release has just hit the 5 million download mark.

NewsForge | dmidecode: What's it good for?

2004-11-29T00:47:00.000-08:00

NewsForge | dmidecode: What's it good for?: "You know you're living in a cutthroat world when your BIOS lies to your operating system at boot time. Yet that's exactly what often happens, to one degree or another, depending on the manufacturer and model of the system. Some of the BIOS lies cause problems for Linux and some don't. The dmidecode project provides the means to learn exactly what claims your BIOS is making about your hardware. Strange as it might seem, it's useful information, even when it's not 100% reliable.
According to the dmidecode project, purpose is to report "information about your system's hardware as described in your system BIOS according to the SMBIOS/DMI
standard... This information typically includes system manufacturer, model name, serial number, BIOS version, asset tag as well as a lot of other details of varying level of interest and reliability depending on the manufacturer. This will often include usage status for the CPU sockets, expansion slots (e.g. AGP, PCI, ISA) and memory module slots, and the list of I/O ports (e.g. serial, parallel, USB).'"

Software & Patents: Open Source Stars Oppose European Patent Directive (SYS-CON)

2004-11-29T00:41:00.000-08:00

Software & Patents: Open Source Stars Oppose European Patent Directive (SYS-CON): "Ahead of a key meeting, Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, Monty Widenius, the CTO of MySQL, and Rasmus Lerdorf, the original author of the PHP scripting language, advertised as the three most famous European authors of open source software, have appealed to the EU Council to abandon the idea of patenting software.

Opposing the so-called software patent directive proposal that would see Europe ape the American system of software patents, the trio urged that 'In the interest of Europe, such a deceptive, dangerous and democratically illegitimate proposal must not become the common position of the member states.'"

Linux servers posting their ninth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth

2004-11-29T00:36:00.000-08:00

Linux servers posting their ninth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth: "'IT spending remained strong overall in the third quarter as customers continued to refresh and expand their IT infrastructures,' said Matt Eastwood, program director of Global Enterprise Server Solutions at IDC. 'Although customers continue to target data center simplification initiatives, investment in strategic IT initiatives - including new workloads - are also growing significantly once again.'

Both Linux and Windows saw strong revenue results in the quarter, with Linux servers posting their ninth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, with year-over-year revenue growth of 42.6 per cent and unit shipments up 31.7 per cent, and Windows servers growing revenues by 13.3 per cent and unit shipments 19.1 per cent year over year. The Unix server space saw mixed results, with a 2.3 per cent revenue year-over-year decline and 8.3 per cent unit growth."

Tectonic -- Linux and open source news

2004-11-29T00:16:00.000-08:00

Tectonic -- Linux and open source news

Community centre runs open source ICDL

2004-11-29T00:09:00.000-08:00

Community centre runs open source ICDL: "The Mogalakwena HP i-community in South Africa's Limpopo province is one of the first training centres worldwide to offer an open source software version of the International Computer Driving Licence(ICDL).

The ICDL is recognised internationally as a benchmark of end-user computer skills.

There is a unique quality to the HP i-community certification in that it is the only one in Africa which is centred purely on open source software, says Imraan Jassat, head of capacity building at the project. 'We are delivering on an overwhelming demand from those 3000 individuals who have already gone through the HP i-community open source software training, for an internationally recognised certification. Specifically, they are certified on their knowledge and capabilities in open source software, such as OpenOffice and other tools and applications.'"

The World�s Coolest Company Awards And the winner is GOOGLE

2004-11-29T00:07:00.000-08:00

The World�s Coolest Company Awards And the winner is GOOGLE

Google are the �World�s Coolest Company� according to the Unshrink network of international business leaders from forward-thinking organisations including Barclaycard, BBC, Canon, Capital One, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Motorola, Nestle, Nokia, SAP, Sony, and Vodafone - organisations which are striving to inspire their workers, beyond money, with family orientated atmospheres.

The award was presented after a series of presentations and a lengthy debate during the annual Unshrink conference in London last week held at the BT tower. It was chosen after consideration of a shortlist of 5 cool cultures including Camper, Honda, Smucker, and WL Gore.