Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Linus Torvalds announced the release of the 2.6.18 Linux kernel, following the previous stable kernel release by three months. He exclaimed, "she's good to go, hoist anchor!", the second year in a row that a kernel release has coincided with 'Talk Like A Pirate Day'. "Here's some real booty for all you land-lubbers," Linus continued, "there's not too many changes, with t'bulk of the patch bein' defconfig updates, but the shortlog at the aft of this here email describes the details if you care, you scurvy dogs."

Ever had the experience of contacting someone for an interview, getting the subject's agreement and then not being able to carry it through for some reason or the other?

IDC surveyed 5000 developers in 116 countries and discovered that open source is used by 71% of them and -- perhaps more surprisingly -- is used in 54% of their production environments.

American Arium has revised its hardware-assisted debugging software for ARM-architecture processors. SourcePoint 6.3 mainly adds support for ARM11 ETMs (embedded trace macrocells), when used with the company's flagship HS-1000 JTAG probe.

Standard Microsystems Corp. (SMSC) is sampling a highly integrated chip claimed to be the industry's first "network multimedia co-processor." The LAN9131 essentially adds a dedicated, Linux-based data-plane computer to existing and new device designs, enabling them to stream multiple high-definition (HD) channels over 100Mb/s Ethernet, according to the company.

IBM has published a final draft of its "Redbook" titled Linux Client Migration Cookbook, Version 2: A Practical Planning and Implementation Guide for Migrating to Desktop Linux. The 376-page book, which targets enterprises needing to begin an evaluation of desktop Linux, is available for free download.

Embedded Linux specialist SDG Systems is shipping a Linux-ized version of a ruggedized, "military-grade" PDA from Tripod Data Systems (TDS). SDG's Linux port for the Recon-X is based on a 2.6.15 kernel, and includes technical and warranty support. Tools, training, and customization services are also available.

Welcome to this year's 38th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. David Barker thanked the project for the well developed etch distribution. Joey Schulze contemplated etch to be ready for release already. From Friday to Sunday a bug squashing party will be organised in Berlin, Germany.

Users of Open Office.org's open source productivity suite will have a chance to win cash and prizes by submitting template and clipart designs in a contest sponsored by OpenOffice.org and WorldLabel.com. The contest, which ends October 13, offers a top prize of $750 to first place winners who submit the best template or clipart design, along with cash and other prizes to second through fifth place winners in both categories.

Chordbook.com is a virtual playground for guitarists. The site is one of the most popular guitar chord databases on the 'Net, and was once listed as one of the BBC's top 10 educational sites. Chordbook.com features an interactive database of chords and a unique "virtual guitar" that allows users to visualize chord fingerings and hear chords as they should sound by "strumming" the virtual guitar. Glasgow guitarist Bob Melrose created the site as a hobby, using Adobe Flash on top of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

[Now this is something that will spark the interest of my Guitarist. - Scott]

Lattice Semiconductor has introduced a 32-bit soft core microprocessor for its FPGAs. Interestingly, it is available as open source software code with Eclipse C development tools which are downloadable from the web.

Every now and then, you stumble across a software system that you never think about. Such is the case with a Linux-powered helicopter simulator being developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. And no, you can't run it on your PlayStation 2.

A group of senior developers from the Debian GNU/Linux project have decided to raise funds to pay volunteers who work on the project in order that releases can be made more frequently.

More than 200 members of the KDE community, related projects, industry partners, and interested users will be gathering on Friday for Akademy 2006 at the Trinity College Dublin to work on the next-generation KDE 4 desktop and cross-desktop standards. See the official press release for the full announcement.

The HP story just grew again. This is the worst yet. Now it's being reported in the New York Times in an article titled Hewlett Review Is Said to Detail Deeper Spying [sub and cookies req'd] that pretexting isn't the only issue:

The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa has called on African leaders to adopt open source software as a tool to speed up development saying this would reduce costs and enhance opportunities for innovation.

I've been tracking the evolution of Microsoft FUD for nearly 10 years now, and wrote a shorthistory of the subject a few months back.  But even I was impressed when I came across Microsoft's latest effort in this department: it's truly a masterpiece of its kind.

To increase awareness as well as boost the number of Linux users in the CNMI, a faculty member of the Northern Marianas College has set up a showroom that demonstrates the merits of the operating system for those interested in converting their old PC OS to Linux.

[This is just one of the growing number of FOSS related articles coming out of the South Pacific these days. - Scott]

The Alacarte menu editor is one of the major additions in GNOME 2.16. Already previously available in Ubuntu and other distributions, Alacarte adds a degree of customization that has been generally lacking since GNOME dropped its previous menu editor more than five years ago during the early 2.x releases.

Computer vision specialist Tyzx is shipping a relatively low-cost, standalone, Linux-based stereo 3D vision system targeting high-volume commercial and defense robots, automobiles, and person-tracking security systems. The DeepSea G2 can provide real-time 3D vision processing where traditional workstations can't go, the company says.