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Microsoft and Yahoo made a smart deal this week, but I'm wondering why go with Bing, a search technology that's less than 2 months old, and why for 10 years?

In part 1 an examination of creating an ultra simple single port single host port check program was done. In the second part of the series the code was broken out between a header file and source file, input validation added, a usage message defined and a Makefile was setup for simple recompiling. In this part of the series one of the items of the TODO list will be tackled: smaller timeout value for connection test by way of a host pre-check. Which leaves the program with two final TODO items for the next installment:

1. Breaking up the program functionally
2. Detailed error handling
3. Hostname resolution (or not)
4. Any last minute details...

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The cross-platform Qt GUI framework now runs on Wind River's VxWorks real-time operating system, although it currently still requires a separate X11 server to be installed. The Qt developers point out that this version of Qt will probably never run without being customised for each respective version of VxWorks.

Fun with NULL pointers, part 1 took a detailed look at the long chain of failures which allowed the kernel to be compromised by way of a NULL pointer dereference. Eliminating that particular bug was a straightforward fix; it was, in fact, fixed before the nature of the vulnerability was widely understood. The importance of this particular problem is, in one sense, relatively small; there are very few distributions which shipped vulnerable versions of the kernel. But this exploit suggests that there could be a whole class of related problems in the kernel; there is a definite chance that similar vulnerabilities could be discovered - if, indeed, they have not already been found.

Microsoft had to report a 30% slump in sales for the last quarter. Their report to the U.S. SEC includes a rundown of their risk and competition factors. Among their concerns are Linux and open source untertakings, but also their own partners HP and Intel.

This week there were several interesting stories at Phoronix, if you happened to miss any of them. We started off by sharing that proper multi-seat support for Linux / X.Org is on the way with the new VGA arbitration code coming about. With this new implementation, multiple X Servers can be run side-by-side without needing to use Xephyr or any ugly hacks.

Mérida, July 29, 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) - This week the Venezuelan Education Ministry began its program, dubbed Project Canaima, to provide primary schools with mini laptops, and incorporate the technology into the education system. While schools are on vacation this week, the ministry will be conducting workshops for teachers on using the computers as educational tools. Starting in September, when the school semester begins, the ministry anticipates providing 50,000 laptop computers to over 1,150 schools nationally.

This fix, courtesy of the fine users of Arch Linux, solved my Xorg problems and cleared the way for me to upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS to Ubuntu 9.04 — and to the next version of Debian, to Slackware 13.0 ... and just about everything else Unix-like out there on my 2002-era Toshiba 1100-S101 laptop.

You may have seen that the Debian project (my particular GNU/Linux distribution of choice) has decided to schedule fixed time-based releases in future. This has come as a surprise to many — including possibly some Debian developers — largely because of Debian’s long-standing “we ship when it’s ready” policy. So what caused this change of heart and is it a good idea?

A quarterly update of the development of the opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM system

Forget the rumored Apple tablet. A Facebook thin tablet would rule the Earth. While the 'net is abuzz over rumors of the Apple tablet, I'd like to point out a category of device in a form-factor that doesn't yet exist, but would be a killer product. It's also what I believe the CrunchPad tablet should have been designed to be. And that's the "thin^2 tablet". By thin, I mean it's physically thin in dimension, like the iPhone, but it's also thin in the sense that thin-clients are thin when they have nothing but firmware to access a remote server.

Good educational software is hard to come by. And with budgets tight, it is understandable that many schools are turning to Linux and open-source software to save money. Most people have no idea how many outstanding educational applications there are for the Linux operating system. Here are 10 of the best.

Story about how a 6 year old bug was finally fixed by a weekend of hacking after being ignored by Pidgin developers, and then plagiarized.

Modern all-purpose Linux distributions require a lot of RAM and disk space. What's going on, is it lard? Functionality? Have the bytes themselves gotten porky? Paul Rubens investigates the Case of the Portly Linux.

Free software is definitely going strong in some areas, especially in the server market. However, there are other areas where free software and free protocols have failed. Internet based voice and video communication is one of those areas. The market is basically fully owned by Skype, a piece of proprietary software based on a proprietary (and abusive) protocol in the hands the same company that runs eBay. Free software advocates have been saying “what if Skype was discontinued?” for years. Then I read about eBay considering shutting Skype down. Pardon? What's bugging Tony Mobily? Read the full article at Free Software Magazine

Human beings are very interesting creatures. Their behaviour is very unpredictable and often illogical. They have emotions and feelings that drive them to do certain things. My Blog is about promoting GNU/Linux and technology.

As is already indicated by version 0.9, which has just been released, Eclipse 4 will incorporate several familiar web technologies and put them to new uses. The Eclipse development environment has become a very popular open source project. A flexible software tool kit, Eclipse can integrate the products of several vendors as plug-ins, for example for modelling, development and software tests; for some time now, Eclipse hasn't just been about Java.

If you're in the mood for Linux — and who amongst us isn't — September may be your month, as the Linux Foundation presents the inaugural LinuxCon in Portland. Just shy of two months ago we sounded the call to rise, shine, and catch the early bird rate — sadly, the early bird's worm is no more. It's still possible, though, to grab yourself a spot and shave a nice slice off the price.

When I try to use Iceweasel to access a certain Firefox-compatible Web app, I get an error message and can't continue. However, there's an easy fix: Make your browser tell the world that it's Firefox, not Iceweasel.

What if it would be possible not only to change the application background color in OpenOffice.org, but also replace it by a pattern / bitmap? Some mockups here...