Showing headlines posted by bob

Zombie language gets XML, Java support IBM is giving its COBOL environment a cloudy flavour with an update to the ancient venerable and unkillable language.…

DNF is the experimental fork of the Yum package manager that premiered in Fedora 18. While much hasn't been heard of this experimental Yum replacement since its debut, work on it has still been progressing and is turning out to be in great shape, is slowly approaching feature-parity with Yum, and is faster...

In an effort to make Enlightenment E17 available through the openSUSE installer and DVD, the lightweight LXDE desktop environment may be pushed away...

On April 19th the United States Patent and Trademark Office finally rejected an application for the trademark open source hardware. The grounds for the rejection were that the term was "merely descriptive." Trademarks are intended to identify a specific source of goods or services, protecting that source from confusion in the minds of consumers with other sources. Naturally then, if you try to obtain a trademark which is just a description of a type of product or service, it is proper that you should be refused; it would not be distinctive and it would distort the market by allowing one source to control the generic term. If I market a car for a hamster, I should not be able to get a trademark for the name hamster car, as that would improperly restrain competitors from bringing their own hamster cars to market. So, should we be pleased that the application was rejected?

At Google I/O today, Google released an early access preview version of an Android integrated development environment (IDE) based on IntelliJ IDEA. To its IntelliJ foundation, Android Studio adds an enhanced drag-and-drop GUI layout editor, Gradle-based build system, Lint tools, Android-focused wizards, and the ability to preview how apps look on different screen sizes. Like [...]

Which repository is your primary choice? SourceForge GitHub Google Code Gitorious Bitbucket Codeplex Other From James Bowes' article, A code hosting comparison for open source projects:

Everyone planning and building Web solutions with Drupal benefits from understanding what a "hook" is—and why Drupal is not a CMS.

Nexcom announced a network security appliance with Unified Threat Management (UTM) services based on Freescale’s new 12-core, 1.8GHz QorIQ T4240 system-on-chip (SOC). The NSA 5640 is equipped with up to 6GB of DDR3 RAM, 2GB NAND flash, mini-PCI Express expansion, eight gigabit Ethernet ports, optional 4-port 10GbE connectivity, and PowerPC Linux support. The NSA 5640 [...]

Arch Linux replaced MySQL with MariaDB, openSUSE gutted MySQL, Fedora replaced MySQL, and now Ubuntu Linux is looking to continue the trend...

With one week to go until the soft feature freeze for KDE 4.11, there's a better idea for the features that are likely to come to the next major release of the KDE Plasma desktop...

NEC has announced an Android smartphone that uses a water-cooling system to keep its quad-core 1.7GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro system-on-chip (SOC) from overheating. The NEC Medias X 06E integrates a liquid cooling pipe near the SOC to cool off the 4.7-inch phone, which is being marketed at Japanese women. Liquid cooling has been used in [...]

The Linux Foundation has confirmed that NASA will be switching to Debian 6 Linux for its laptop requirements inside the Space Shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) operations.

The open education landscape is set to grow a little more as Stanford University announces plans to team up with edX to build an online learning platform that universities and developers around the world can access for free. edX, a not-for-profit online education project founded in 2012 by MIT and Harvard University, develops online learning courses for students. The project encourages collaboration between teachers, students, and faculty to fit the needs of individual institutions.

Texas Instruments (TI) announced an evaluation kit for its next-generation digital-light-processing (DLP) chipset, offering much higher resolution and brightness than its predecessor. The DLP LightCrafter 4500 is aimed at 3D imaging applications such as machine vision, quality control, dental and retinal scanning, spectrometers, augmented reality devices, and 3D printers. The DLP LightCrafter 4500 is built [...]

As an organization or even individual there always seem to be questions when considering whether or not to make your project or code snippet open source. Many times, it starts with trying to figure out which license to use. But there are many other things to consider. We derived a list for you the next time you ask yourself: Should I open source my code?

First-quarter 2013 shipments of “smart mobile devices,” including notebooks, tablets, and smartphones, swelled by 37.4 percent year-on-year to 308.7 million units, reports mobile market analyst Canalys. From the operating system perspective, Android grabbed a healthy majority of units shipped, at 59.5 percent. Of the other leading smart mobile device OS vendors, Apple’s iOS accounted for [...]

Want to run Linux on the Google Computer Engine cloud? Starting immediately, Debian Linux is Google's Linux of choice.

Last week, The White House published an Executive Order by which the default method for government data collection and dissemination must now be:

At the Open Source Business Conference 2013, conversations on innovation, disruption, and open source leadership dominated the sessions. The conference chair, Matt Assay, crafted a program where each presentation and conversation reinforced how traditional business strategies are being disrupted by new market dynamics. The dynamics are shifting power away from closed, proprietary corporate leadership towards open collaboration and user-led innovation. The shift is disrupting traditional business strategies, IT operation practices, and market dominance.

One of the keys to a successful open data portal is to make it useful for the end user. Citizens and developers should be able to understand data sets without needing a PhD. I've been following the progress of Raleigh, North Carolina's open data initiative, which launched a beta of their data.raleighnc.gov portal in March 2013.