Showing all newswire headlines

I spent two days this past week at Microsoft Search Champs, a conference where invitees make suggestions for their search tools and other MSN offerings. Microsoft paid for everything and picked our brains concerning a lot of different topics, some under NDA and some public.

Why would I do this, and why would they want me there? I've been associated with the free software movement for at least ten years. But while I value openness, I also value functionality. If you browse my articles and blogs about Microsoft, you'll find about as many positive references as negative ones. I appreciate new solutions and technologies from all vendors, and I think one company's success will provide a model and a motivation for others to move forward.

---

Andy Oram is an editor for O'Reilly Media, specializing in Linux and free software books, and a member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. His web site is http://www.praxagora.com/andyo.

How to get started with GNOME monkeyshines using the open-source .NET system Mono.

Novell announced it will bundle support and training offerings with its market leading SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server, making it easier than ever for small and medium sized businesses to leverage the power of Linux*.

Here is a very nice article on the topic of partitioning ones hard disk and why one should partition it. The author also gives a few tips on good design principles related to creating partitions.

Though it was overshadowed last week by news that Google is going to censor its Chinese search engine and protect the privacy of pedophiles in the United States, another bit of Googlish news caught my eye: The company is funding a big, new academic effort at Harvard and Cambridge to combat spyware and adware, which the new organization has decided to call "badware." Read about it at the new Web site, stopbadware.org.

According to the site, "StopBadware.org is a 'Neighborhood Watch' campaign aimed at fighting badware." It says the organization "will seek to provide reliable, objective information about downloadable applications in order to help consumers make better choices about what they download onto their computers. We aim to become a central clearinghouse for research on badware and the bad actors who spread it, and become a focal point for developing collaborative, community-minded approaches to stopping badware."

One of the Apache projects does all the hard work for you and makes it very easy to create, read and update Excel, and soon, Word files. This project is called POI. It has already been in development for several years, starting in April 2001. It is currently in version 2.5.

Novell has had one of those amazingly simple ideas that make you ask: "Why didn't I think of that?" The Linux vendor is using its Cool Solutions community-relations website to conduct an online public survey to determine which Windows-only applications people want to run on their Linux systems.

In the blink of a few recent news reports, using an Internet search engine has lost its innocence. For entrepreneurs like Roger Dingledine and others making Web anonymity software, that means basking in newfound attention.

Point & Click OpenOffice.org! is Robin "Roblimo" Millers latest book introducing new users to the excellent OpenOffice.org software package. PCBurn has taken a look at what Point & Click has to offer and which users it's appropriate for.

The Secure Shell protocol is one step closer to becoming an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard. Earlier this month SSH Communications Security Corp. announced that the Secure Shell protocol specifications have reached Proposed Standard status.

A week ago, many of the best and brightest of the free software movement, with more than a few of our lawyers, descended upon MIT for the widely anticipated release of the first discussion draft of the third version the GNU General Public License (GPLv3). Executive Vice Presidents of Fortune 500 companies, heads of global business units, general counsels, and many of free software's most clearly recognizable faces peppered the crowd. Everyone knew that something historic, and very important, was about to happen.

OpenOffice.org Writer uses templates to store the initial formatting of a document. If you plan to use Writer to write your next book, you will need a good book template, or rather several, for the different components of your book. This article walks you through the process of creating a complex book template that includes front matter (copyright, acknowledgments, and preface), table of contents, chapters, appendixes, and an alphabetical index -- all assembled into a master document.

The odds are good that the LAMP stack is running somewhere inside your company. The acronym refers to the foundational foursome of the open-source movement: The Linux operating system, Apache Web server, MySQL database and, collectively, the Perl, PHP and Python programming languages. Development tools such as Eclipse and application servers such as JBoss have also gained popularity — and trust — especially now that major vendors such as IBM, BEA Systems and Borland have adopted or supported them commercially. But what about the next step up the software ladder? Is open source ready for ERP, business intelligence or CRM? Ready or not, it’s happening; the first industrial-grade applications in these areas are now emerging.

Parsix GNU/Linux is a new twist on an old theme. It is one of a number of remixes of the Kanotix/Knoppix line, but with some very interesting differences. First off is the fact that it is centered around, and tailored to users of Persian languages and keyboards, while also being very usable in English. The next big difference is that Parsix uses the Gnome desktop (2.12.2) instead of the standard KDE Desktop found in most of these remastered distros. But is there more to Parsix than just a different DE and language? The answer to that question is a definite “yes”.

Open source is a communist regime imposed upon us by the Free Software Foundation and its evil minions. Firefox is a load of rubbish that lied its way to its current market share. <b>Jason Norwood-Young</b> takes issue with the latest blogging fad – telling the world that open source is the root of all evil.

[Ed: I am more than familiar with the old "GPL = Communism" line. We know that Proprietary licenses come much closer to that description. It was the Firefox myths that blew me away. Did you know Firefox is supposed to be "bug free"? - dcparris]

Today is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Most people know him as one of the world's greatest composers; few, though, are aware that Mozart was also a hacker.

Digg Story

Last week's newsletter pointing to Novell's "Bridging NetWare skills to Novell OES for Linux" training prompted reader Mike Ossing to drop me a note with his impressions of the course. Ossing had gone through it last fall when it was first announced. His impression was that Novell "...barely scratched the surface, and if I hadn't had the chance to previously play with the Novell [Linux] desktop and the SuSE 9.2 install, with my 'Dummies' book close at hand, I'd have been a little lost. Maybe a lot lost. I think I'd classify them more as an overview course. I got about 60% of the questions right the first time through."

An annual survey of 300 futurists, academics and business people from 28 countries by the Global Future Forum has found that future technology needs answers to ethical questions.

Platforms Feature Both Single and Dual Core Processors

LinuxAsia 2006, Asia s premier open source conference and exposition, will be held in New Delhi on February 8-10, 2006. The event is of particular interest to the India market as open source solutions are being built on all of India's major languages and are cost-effectively meeting a broad range of economic and social needs.