Showing all newswire headlines

Novell has joined the board of the Technical Committee for the Open Document Format.

The format is created by the OASIS standards body. It aims to create an open standard for text and other documents that allow them to be used across applications.

Cartoonist Rube Goldberg's cartoon series focused on inventions or machines that did something simple in a very, very complex way -- inventions that inevitably involved pulleys, weights, and levers. In this special challenge, the developerWorks editors weigh in (with those cute, antique triangular iron weights popular for muscle men around the first turn of the last century) with their own Goldberg-esque entries to delight and tantalize.

Last week the software company took part in its second multi-vendor roadshow this year to drive the Linux message, as it continues to boost the Linux capabilities of its product line-up.

Novell joined Unisys and Oracle to present sessions in Auckland and Wellington on deploying Linux in data centres.

In July and August it undertook a multi-stop tour with Oracle and HP to raise awareness about the choices available with Linux from the desktop to the data centre.

[With the number of recent reports about Novell winning contracts in Indiana (for Novell Linux Desktops on students' desks) and in China, etc., seems like Novell's Linux message is merely growing stronger. - Ed]

Japan's largest mobile carrier last week announced six new phones with support for PTT (push-to-talk), multiple numbers, and other advanced features. NTT/DoCoMo's 902i-series phones includes Linux-based models from NEC and Panasonic, as well as Symbian-based models from Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Sharp, and Sony/Ericsson.

DistroWatch reports - The first Preview of our Beta 1 release has now been released. While this release does not contain all items scheduled for the first beta it does represent a significant leap forward from the Alpha 4 release. Some notable changes in this release include: improved stability in mezzo; new faster orchestra renderer now using .orchestra for it's profile; updated applications; added Totem media player; build no longer uses set Knoppix paths so it can be installed and used multi-user with GDM or KDM...

OSDir has some nice shots of Symphony OS Beta 1 PR1.

[Ed- This is an oldie but goodie, inspired by Lexmark's attempt to use the DMCA to block third-party ink cartridge vendors. It's an inspired example of individual activism.]

SYS-CON Media (www.sys-con.com), the world's leading i-technology media company, announced that its 2005 Readers' Choice Awards polls will cose on December 31, 2005. So far more than 16,000 readers cast their votes to select the best software products and services of the year for Java, Linux, Web Services, XML, Microsoft .NET, ColdFusion and Macromedia MX.

TCP and iSCSI acceleration product vendor Silverback Systems Inc. is rolling out a PCI-X iSCSI (Internet Small Computer Systems Interface) HBA (host bus adapter) the company claims has the industry's highest performance and function set. Dubbed the iSNAP 2110, this device is slated for server and workstation applications. The board packs dual 1Gbps Ethernet-compliant IEEE-802.3 full duplex ports.

Regent Insurance Company, a local provider of underwrite services for motor and motor-related businesses, has switch from its existing Sun-based systems to an Intel/Linux solution with the help of Linux providers Synaq.

Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, threatened to pull its Windows operating system from South Korea if antitrust regulators order the company to remove programming for instant message and movie player services.

GNU/Linux is without doubt a brilliant server OS, but monitoring your Linux server can be a challenge. There are a few powerful tools available, such as MRTG, the Multi Router Traffic Grapher, but setting them up can be an exercise in frustration for first-time users. By contrast, Cacti, a graphing program for network statistics, is designed to be easy for relatively inexperienced systems administrators to use, while at the same time being powerful enough to be used in complex networks.

[Mark Spencer likens Free/Open Source Software to self-service air travel. How would you like to be able to re-arrange your own flight? - Ed]

It's not the community's job to write device drivers for Linux, and yet we're forced to because vendors are just too darn lazy to support this burgeoning operating system.

Version 2.20 of Bugzilla, the Mozilla bug tracking software, has been released. The Bugzilla 2.20 new features page has more details about the improvements in this release, which include experimental support for PostgreSQL (previously only MySQL was supported) and a new user interface style.

This week, advisories were released for mozilla, module-assistant, eric, sudo, libgda2, imlib, koffice, net-snmp, lynx, RTF, Netpbm, cURL, Zope, phpMyAdmin, ethereal, pam, and fetchmail. The distributors include Debian, Gentoo, and Red Hat.

Stephen Shankland wrote an article entitled: 'Desktop Linux 'like teenage sex'. (sic) And while the underlying article appeared up to scale, the headline doesn't belong in the technical press.

It's a given that children need at least basic computing skills. Should you encourage your kids to consider a computing career? What if they turn into fat, nearsighted, socially-impaired, tunnel-visioned geeks?

Buffer overflow in lynx, a text-mode browser for the WWW that can be remotely exploited.

Guest Editor Apostasy has decided to take a look at current distributions and how they perform and install on an older laptop.

IBM's DeveloperWorks has reviewed an inexpensive PowerPC development board aimed at Linux and eCos projects. The $650 TAMS 3011 "Moab" SBC (single-board computer) is a PCI card for use with passive backplanes. It is available with Linux and eCos tools and a powered three-slot PCI chassis.