Showing all newswire headlines

Basically Mozilla isn't claiming the same number of users as downloads since some people have downloaded multiple versions of Firefox; others have cancelled the download; while yet others download but don't regularly use Firefox.

Freespire is a very well put together distro in RC status, that still has a few small bugs to work out.  Over all I am quite impressed, and am comfortable recommending it to most anyone who is interesting in trying Linux out.
Read the rest here:

This article shows how to change a system password using a web based PHP script. This is one the essential tasks that many new sys admin find it little difficult as they are not familiar with PHP. Using concept presented in this article one can write extended edition with any other programming language such as Perl or Python.

Linus Torvalds had harsh comments about the committees organized by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) to help it draft version 3 of the GNU Public License (GPLv3). However, so far as NewsForge can determine, none of those actually involved in the process agree with Torvalds' assessment that the FSF isn't listening to feedback.

This is a very rough guide at the moment, corrections welcome. This method doesn't remove Windows in any way, similar to booting from CD-ROM on a PC

[It's not the Apache you may be thinking about. Hope someone can do a little analysis of this; the instructions appear to be complete. -- grouch]

Write a program in Haskell that translates C type declarations into English.

This is part two of a two-part series [see linuxjournal.com/article/9096 for part one]. In this article, I build upon the concept of a parse pipeline with the State monad. Then, with all the pieces in place, I show the complete Haskell program. I also take a step back and consider why Haskell isn't as popular as some other languages and whether it deserves a place in your programmer's toolbox.

Last week Google launched an open-source project hosting service for professional software developers as part of its Google Code offerings.

"Google is rooted in open source and we would like to make it easy for others to develop innovative open-source applications," says Greg Stein, the Google engineering manager who is spearheading the hosting site. Stein joined Google after a stint as director of engineering at CollabNet, where he managed the Subversion project. He is also the chairman of the Apache Software Foundation.

[Note the comments by Jay Seirmarco, general manager of SourceForge.net on the coordination with Google. -- grouch]

Welcome to this year's 30th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! This is my third and final week bringing you DistroWatch Weekly. It's been great fun, but I now have an even greater appreciation for the contribution Ladislav Bodnar makes to the Linux and Open Source Community. Fedora and Mandriva have announced the end of the support cycle for some older products, Ubuntu is starting class and Gentoo is holding elections. Dr. W. T. Zhu brings us an in-depth look at all the options and features available here at Distrowatch with glimpses into some of the history as well. Beranger brings us a wonderful look at last week's release of Zenwalk Linux 2.8, while I report on my test drive of Berry Linux 0.72. I hope you enjoy this week's DWW. Oh, and as Ladislav always says, "Happy reading!"

If you're using MySQL, there are some easy things you can do to secure your systems and significantly reduce the risk of unauthorised access to your sensitive data.

The most valuable asset for technology-based organisations is usually the customer or product information in their databases. And so, a critical part of database administration in such organisations consists of securing these databases against outside attack and hardware/software failures.

Win4Lin, which develops desktop and enterprise Windows-on-Linux virtualization software, announced Aug. 1 that its Win4Lin Pro product is now compatible with Linspire's latest distro, Five-0. It is now available in Linspire's online CNR Warehouse.

Extra compensation for specialized IT-related skills continued to gain steam in the U.S. and Canada during the second quarter of 2006, and is becoming a standard practice in IT employee retention and recruiting, according to Foote Partners' Hot Technical Skills and Certifications Pay Index covering 242 IT skills. The analysts report that -- as in the first quarter -- noncertified IT skills compensation had the higher overall growth rate.

Don’t let disaster happen to you. Lewin Edwards presents five engineering tips that are crucially important to successful product engineering, but which are rarely brought up in discussions of engineering practices. He will cover the absurd, the annoying, and the physically dangerous, and give you hints for avoiding all sorts of these situations.

Rachel Werner writes: "Mozilla is now recruiting for the Firefox User Panel, which is an initiative to learn more about how end-users interact with the Web. Firefox User Panel members will complete a series of short online surveys on a variety of Web-related topics, with the aggregate results made available to the Mozilla community. "To create a diverse user panel, Mozilla is looking to reach people from all walks of life and skill sets — from students to retirees, novice users to power users, Firefox users but also people who use Internet Explorer or other browsers."

“Why should organizations consider a hosted collaborative environment rather than hosting it themselves?”

Although I rarely run Windows these days, it seems I can't break the habit of using one or two Windows applications instead of their open source equivalents. However, instead of having a full-blown Windows desktop, I prefer to run these programs on my GNU/Linux system with Wine. The problem is that I'm tired of having to enter cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program FilesMy Windows App; wine My Windows App.exe every time I want to launch one of these programs. Having shell scripts for each program is not a great solution either. Wouldn't it be better to simply run My Windows App.exe directly on an XTerm? Fortunately the Linux kernel already lets you do that with a feature called binfmt_misc.

I recently picked up an old discarded laptop... straight out of a corporate garbage bin, as a matter of fact. Could it be useful? What could it do? As an IT professional, I thought I'd find out.

[The author did considerable research to do a dual-boot installation. I think it's significant that he states, "The installs went like clockwork. I had all the software in hand, and had read everything I could beforehand. I did have trouble getting the modem to work under Windows." -- grouch]

LXer Feature: 5-Aug-2006

Bill MacArthur is a general IT guy for an On-Line Shopping Mall. He chose PostgreSQL running on Red Hat Linux to drive the business.

Despite the involvement of big businesses in free and open source software, the movement continues to be dominated by individuals. In the first of two features, Matthew Aslett identifies the open source VIPs.

[I don't know how this excellent piece got by us when it came out. In my opinion, this is an historical tribute. Larry Augustin, Miguel de Icaza, John/Jane Doe, Matthias Ettrich, Bill Hilf, Ron Hovsepian, Pamela Jones, Judge Dale Kimball, Neelie Kroes, Marten Mickos are honored in this part. -- grouch]

take a look at how automated inspectors like CheckStyle, JavaNCSS, and CPD enhance the development process and when you should use them.

Rip your DVDs to a nice portable .avi the easy way with Acidrip, a very competent front-end for Mencoder.