Showing all newswire headlines

My inability to do more-than-simple mathematics at times has really put a cramp in my computing style. In the case of OpenBSD and the $15 Laptop — the Compaq Armada 7770dmt — it has cost me 32 MB of RAM ever since I upgraded from 64 MB to the maximum 144 MB. The reason is that in some Compaq's OpenBSD will not address more than 16 MB of RAM without some intervention on the part of the user.

Carla Schroder says she just "kind of wandered into" her current life as a free software advocate and well-known IT journalist. "I don't have much in the way of formal education. But I've always been mechanically inclined - your classic ripping things apart and figuring out how they work. I think that makes open source a natural fit for me."

Matt Hartley at Datamation recently suggested promoting open source adoption -- using a very different venue. He suggests mall kiosks as a potentially effective way to spread the word about open source software, and how it can work for the average computer user. This is a fascinating idea. User groups could reach several different demographics, populations that might never have heard of Linux, never mind understand the joys (and trials) of using it.

Adobe has issued its second release candidate of Flash Player 10, which should be approaching the finish line. Developers have not only fixed a number of bugs, but added a few new features.

shd-tcp-tools provides a collection of tools for port forwarding, load balancing, and rate-limiting TCP connections. They can be useful if you want to offer SSH services but also limit how much of your bandwidth each user can consume, so that a single long-running SCP operation cannot starve the link from your server to the Internet.

We’re still working on this. There’s been a bunch of helpful feedback. We appreciate this. We think we’ve integrated the feedback into something that’s a good solution; different from out last version in both its essence and its presentation and content.

The next time somebody tells you that Ubuntu isn't for business, check out this list of more than 120 businesses and organizations across the globe running Ubuntu on servers, desktops and mobile systems. The companies are part of the fast-growing Works With U 1000 list, which will eventually track 1,000 Ubuntu-focused companies across the globe. Take a look or add your company to the list.

Get ready for Rovio, a small three-wheeled mobile robot that offers audio/visual telepresence via its built-in wireless web-cam. An onboard webserver enables access from anywhere in the world.

Cisco and VMware hook up in one of the oddest technical romances in recent history. What good can come of this?

T&A Lingerie says it runs Ubuntu Linux on servers and desktops. But is this a legitimate claim, or an attempt to trick geeks into looking at ladies in lingerie? Judge for yourself.

The Shuttleworth Foundation’s open philanthropy fellow, Mark Surman, will be moving to the Mozilla Foundation where he has been appointed executive director and will continue his work in open sourcing philanthropy.

Plenty of people say Ubuntu isn't ready for prime time. But what they really mean is "I don't want to learn a new operating system." Here's how I convinced my wife to overcome her fear of switching to Ubuntu. Take a look.

Things go wrong. Hard disks fail and whole servers crash. Luckily, many Linux-based distributions are available to help systems administrators handle minor catastrophes. We looked at four of the most portable, all of which fit on a 210MB mini CD -- SliTaz, Parted Magic, GParted, and RIPLinuX. Each of these distributions is easy to use -- just insert the CD or plug in the USB drive on which it's installed, then boot. Each gives you access to a variety of open source tools that you can use to manage disks, partitions, and files and perform diagnostics and network troubleshooting. These distributions provide most of the tools that you might need in an emergency situation.

WebVZ is one of the simplest and most powerful web management tools for OpenVZ. This article explains how you can install WebVZ 2.0 on a Debian Etch system.

A while ago I reviewed 6 GUI clients for IRC, so today I'll continue with the second part with this review of 5 CLI (Command Line Interface) clients.

If you tallied up the strengths and weaknesses of Linux and Windows, which OS would come out ahead? According to Jack Wallen, superiority in security, flexibility, interoperability, community, and command-line power (among other things) put Linux well ahead. See if you agree with his assessment.

Like a diamond, a digital media player or a rare coin, the latest mini-notebooks are good things in small packages. By squeezing a lot of computing power into a very mobile package at a hard-to-beat price, they are turning the established mobile pecking order on its head. Until recently, the smallest and lightest notebooks commanded the highest price tags. Take, for example, Lenovo's ThinkPad X300 and Apple's MacBook Air -- they each weigh about 3 pounds, sell for between $2,500 and $3,000 and are the envy of travelers the world over.

If you're part of a software development team that performs multiple daily builds, then you might replace the term "continuous integration" with "continuous build failure." A company called Electric Cloud may offer a solution. The software production tools maker later this month will begin shipping ElectricCommander 3.0, the latest version of its build automation system that can now check or "preflight" newly modified source code to determine if it will correctly build into an application. Version 3.0 also now integrates with Eclipse and Visual Studio.

Although companies can stick their feet into virtual worlds for a mere tens of thousands of dollars, serious return on investment really requires expenditures in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to Sibley Verbeck, CEO of The Electric Sheep Company, a virtual worlds software, content and services provider.

Given the prevalence of DirectX nowadays, we tend to forget that 10 years ago an all-out war was being waged between Microsoft and Silicon Graphics in the field of 3D APIs. The two companies were both trying to win over developers, with Microsoft using its financial muscle and SGI relying on its experience and its reputation in the field of real-time 3D.