Showing all newswire headlines

A cry from a fellow composer arrived yesterday asking how to quickly adjust the gain level for over 10,000 audio files. Designers from all over recommended the usual applications — Peak, SoundForge, Waves, Barbabatch, Wavelab — as help to his predicament. Fine recommendations, but this is a perfect job for Linux. A simple script, the bash shell and free Linux audio applications can fix him up nicely. (Those who don't have a spare PC quit belly-aching. Linux doesn't require the horsepower that Windows craves, so retrieve that old clunker you tossed last year and see my article Resurrect Your Old PC for Music—with Linux for the cost of a blank CD.)

Unable to patiently await the final release date, Tectonic Magazine takes Ubuntu's Breezy preview edition for a spin.

Bring it on! And the toolbar out of beta after only two months! Maybe there's hope Google News will graduate yet from beta. It's four years old this March.

The Auditor security collection is a GPL-licensed live CD based on Knoppix, with more than 300 security software tools. Auditor gives you easy access to a broad range of tools in almost no time.

Thanks Marco. Not exactly what we wanted, but there you have it. Close call for the Penguin, still no cigar. But it's nice to know that Dell has the capability. Especially concerning CFI in general. May not help a lot of the SBs, but there are plenty of MBs out there who may have need of custom software images in the future.

A report released Monday by Symantec said that there were more vulnerabilities for Mozilla browsers than for Internet Explorer. Symantec's "Internet Security Threat Report" covers security trends from January 2005 through June 2005. During that time, according to Symantec, Firefox had 25 vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities while Microsoft's Internet Explorer only had 13.

The biggest coup of open-source software isn't that it's (usually) free for the downloading. No, it's one of the few remaining incubators for truly great apps. Freed from commercial expectations, it starts with a good idea and steadily keeps on evolving as hundreds of developers keep adding features and improvements until, after years of commitment, the good idea finally emerges as a great app.

An IDC report from December 2004 contains some interesting figures for NetWare, the former king of the server room. From an installed base of 2,336,000 units this year, IDC anticipates a drop to 1,408,000 by 2008 -- with a similar story for new license shipments. Extrapolation and statistics have never been my forte, but suffice to say, if IDC is spot-on, then around 2019, things will start to get pretty asymptotic for this once mighty leviathan. It may by then be forgotten that there was a time when the world of the server was almost exclusively red, had teeth and spoke in a languid Midwestern drawl.

Demand for Open Source/Linux developers will remain strong for the foreseeable future, according to a survey of 90 top CIOs/CTOs released this month. But to nail the best job at the best salary, the survey of IT managers says architects and devs should blend Open Source skills with business and project management background.

When it comes to open source vendors and innovation, Bill Gates doesn't waver. In an interview at Microsoft's annual Professional Developers Conference (PDC) last week, Gates told CNet, "I don't think that someone who completely gives up license fees is ever going to have a substantial R&D budget and do the hard things, the things too hard to do in a university environment." JBoss CEO Marc Fleury seems to agree with the idea that building quality software calls for dedicated developers. He calls his company's business model "professional open source," and he prides himself on hiring programmers to work full-time on open source code. But can the classic open source business model really provide the kind of revenue needed to support true innovation? You can't make money giving away products. You can, however, profit by selling support and services around those products, and that's the way many open source companies, including JBoss, are run. Customers can download the code for nothing, but if they want somebody to call when things start falling apart, they have to pay.

StreamServe Inc., which is helmed by the former second-in-command at Novell Inc., announced on Wednesday that its software now supports Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9. The move is part of StreamServe's revamping of its image, an effort put in place since former Novell executive Chris Stone took over as president and CEO in April. It's also a way to garner more business, particularly in Europe. In recent months, StreamServe has rebranded its software, now calling it an enterprise document presentment (EDP) application instead of a business communications management application...

If you run a business, finding an efficient system for managing invoices is critical for sustaining a positive cash flow. Here's how you can create an easy invoicing solution using OpenOffice.org Writer and Calc.

I've been working on a Linux Tips column for an upcoming issue of PC World US--a much tougher assignment than my monthly Free Agent ramble, for two reasons: First, I've got only one magazine page to work with, so I'm a bit restricted in what I can tackle. Second, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of our magazine's readers run Windows, not Linux. Since we do our darnedest to make every page of PC World engaging to our readers, I'm out to craft a Linux column that might prove relevant to those who are still computing Bill Gates-style.

There can hardly an IT administrator today that has not used SSH to log into a remote server. SSH Communications Security, the company that originally developed the SSH protocol (define), has now upped the ante with a pair of new solutions aimed at the enterprise market. SSH, typically in the form of the open source OpenSSH application, is widely deployed in nearly every UNIX and/or Linux variant in existence today, though SSH Communications Security claims its SSH implementation is the only one that is enterprise-grade. The newly announced SSH Tectia client/server solution 5.0 and SSH Tectia Manager 2.0 will work in UNIX, Linux, Windows and IBM mainframe environments and enables secure file transfer, application connectivity and system administration capabilities.

"Despite the well-deserved praise open source software often garners, it can be said that this means for developing software has inefficiencies, these in turn can lead to increased complexity and additional problems. Keith F. Kelly submitted the following editorial to osOpinion/osViews, which illustrates this point and offers some strategies to make them less problematic."

I'm a big fan of Make and an even better fan of their blog (helped by the fact that Philip Torrone maintains it). I recently got my attention grabbed by this post showing this one (furry goat, haha): transport your own Windows CE image and emulator along on your thumbdrive. Wherever you go, just pop in your thumbdrive and you see all your apps, bookmark and whatnot.

Data warehouse specialist Teradata has begun beta testing a version of its database running on Novell's 64bit Suse Linux Enterprise 9 operating system. Currently customers can buy the database hosted on 32bit operating systems - either Teradata's Unix MP-RAS or the Windows Server 2003 operating system. Scott Gnau, Teradata's vice-president of research and development, said the database server works as a black-box, or sealed environment, so the operating system on which it is running is largely invisible to users. However, the move significantly boosts the credibility of Linux as an operating system for mission-critical enterprise applications. Teradata's largest customers currently have over 500 terabytes of data in their warehouse systems, and Teradata's revenues last year were over $1bn.

Symphony OS is one of the most original Linux distros available today. Usually, a distro's most recognizable feature, and the one shown in the mandatory screenshots, is the desktop environment. With Symphony OS, the screenshots are the first hint that this is not your ordinary remix.

Versora and Win4Lin have collaborated on a $99 toolkit aimed at easing the task of migrating desktop PC users from Windows to Linux. The Complete Linux Desktop Migration and Virtualization Toolkit bundles Versora's Progression Desktop -- which automates the migration of data, application, and system settings from Windows desktops to Linux -- along with Win4Lin Pro, which runs Windows 2000/XP and its applications on top of Linux.

QCD Microsystems Wednesday announced the release of Samba PDC (Primary Domain Controller), claimed to be the first Linux system administration platform to utilize the popular Moving-Map Composer (MMC) graphical user interface. The tool boasts a point-and-click GUI administration interface usable by both experts and novices, according to the company.