Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Context, dear boy, context A data model is a methodology for storing, handling and manipulating data. There are lots of them around. One of the most commonly employed at present is the relational model. Brainchild of Edgar Codd, it rapidly came into favour after he published hisseminal paper in 1970. Many of the popular database engines today (for example DB2, Oracle and SQL Server) are based on the relational model.

Enea will demonstrate the Linux port of its "Linx" interprocess communication (IPC) technology at the Freescale Technology Forum (FTF), next week in Orlando, Fla. The company touts Linx as a more performant, scalable alternative to TIPC (transparent IPC) in heterogeneous, distributed computing environments such as those found in telecommunications.

An unconference is based on the idea that the best parts of conferences are the discussions in the hallways and over meals -- not the planned sessions. BarCamp will begin today with a blank, wall-sized paper agenda that participants fill in with sessions they want to lead. Some will come with ideas in mind, others might be inspired during the day.

Pentaho announced that its core open source BI platform and related projects hit a cumulative monthly download record of more than 55,000 in June. This rapid market uptake follows a series of significant second-quarter achievements for Pentaho and its Open BI Suite. As recorded on http://www.sourceforge.net and http://www.javaforge.com, Pentaho’s project downloads totaled more than 55,000 in the month of June.

I have been collecting signatures to the Petition to protect Information Technology property rights at the Ottawa Linux Symposium. Separate from this I received a message from someone in Australia doing similar work with Linux Australia, who also have a petition to their parliament documented as part of their legal issues. The focus on the petition is to tie anti-circumvention provisions to actual infringement, something that was contained in Bill C-60 in Canada.

Linux is uniquely positioned in the OS space with implementations in both the smartphone and feature phone segments. This is in sharp contrast to Symbian, Windows Mobile and Palm which have focused on the smartphone segment. However, Linux phones still represent a small segment of the overall handset market.

The third of four days of the eighth Ottawa Linux Symposium saw a deep discussion on the relative merits of various network file systems in a talk called "Why NFS sucks", a tutorial on reverse engineering a USB device, an introduction to SELinux rival AppArmor, and an update on the status of the Linux Standard Base, among other topics of interest

Longtime Linux admins know that SSH, the "Secure Shell" protocol, is one of the most handy and potentially critical utilities in their software toolbox. Using multiple terminal emulators in an X Windows environment on a workstation, or via the Screen utility, a sysadmin for Linux or other Unix-based OS servers can manage several systems simultaneously with ease. Network administration shell or Perl scripts can make use of SSH to perform automated tasks on multiple servers at once simply and securely.

The MEPIS Linux project team on July 21 released SimplyMEPIS 6.0, its first public distribution to incorporate a Ubuntu core. Based on the Dapper LTS package pool, v6.0 runs the latest security-patched 2.6.15 kernel from Ubuntu-Security and is designed for stable, long-term use and support, project founder and chief maintainer Warren Woodford said.

Many have written about how going Open Source changes your business model or sales process. Dana Blankenhorn notes that the open sourcing of Hyperic's product changed how they work. It required them to write code for stability and continuity, as well as adopt more Open Source tools.

With software companies better able to crack down on piracy, some people find they're having to make tough choices, according to Grigor Gatchev. Nearly every day in Bulgaria, he writes, computer experts have conversations that go something like this:

Next Tuesday at OSCON in Portland, I'll be giving a 3.5 hour tutorial titledOpen Source Clue Training: How to Market to People Who Hate Marketing.As I prepare for that, I thought I'd share some of the curriculum I've come up with. I'm looking for constructive feedback, suggestions and Stories From the Real World that might be useful to the tutorial. Here we go...

OTTAWA -- Day two of the eighth annual Ottawa Linux Symposium (OLS) was more technical than the first. Of the talks, the discussions on the effects of filesystem fragmentation, using Linux to bridge the digital divide, and using Linux on laptops particularly caught my attention, but Dave Jones' talk titled "Why Userspace Sucks" really stole the show.

Aged geeks should remember the Cult of the Dead Cow (CDC) well. The hacker group was particularly famous for its easy-to-use Back Orifice spyware trojan released in 1998, which was as good for corporate espionage as it was for humorous office pranks. So it's with some irony that CDC has released an open source client that secures your instant messenger communications over the Internet.

The Open Management Consortium, founded in May, is a grouping of small companies seeking to bring open-source business models to systems management, an area dominated by larger companies. Although it is still fledging, the organization is already in discussion with larger software providers to join the group and support it financially, said William Hurley, a co-founder of the consortium and chief technology officer of start-up Qlusters.

I have a column (/var/opinion) in an upcoming issue that deals with my struggles to get a MythTV system working. The column ends with a tease about yet another column on Linux standards. I don't want to spoil either, so I'll leave it at that. However, I have another beef about the way my MythTV system is shaping up, or more accurately, falling apart.

The events program and speaker list have been announced for the fall Embedded Systems Conference, set for Sept. 25-28 in Boston. The event will feature 160 exhibitors and 82 classes in eight tracks. A Linux/Open Source track features classes from well-known embedded Linux trainer/consultant Bill Gatliff.

For now, Internet service providers are prohibited from discriminating against connections to particular sites on the Internet: they are required to treat traffic to Google exactly the same as traffic to Yahoo! or MSN. This principle of equality is called "network neutrality." However, large telecommunication companies are lobbying congress to scrap the network neutrality rules that have been in place since the birth of the Internet. We don't have to look far to see why this is a bad idea.

[They are chomping at the bit to be able to block content from subscribers to then charge for access to it.- Scott]

LXer Feature: 22-Jul-2006

Lobby4Linux founder, Ken Starks (a.k.a., Helios) recently went to Washington to take the fight for freedom - whether it's software or media - to the hallowed halls of Congress. Now he faces an even greater battle - a battle for his very life.

Advances in technology have revolutionized the way people live, learn and work, but these benefits have not spread around the world evenly. A digital divide exists between communities in their access to computers, the Internet, and other technologies. The United Nations is aware of the importance of including technology development as part of a larger effort to bridge this global digital divide. This article looks at how various United Nations agencies use free and open source software to meet the goal of putting technology at the service of people around the world.