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African telcos have been forced to drop their international call rates by as much as 75 percent over the past year as VoIP operators start to bite into their market share, says a new report released this week.

The Faces of KDE takes a look at some of the developers working on KDE 4. "In this stage of development it’s a lot of pain for very little glory, re-designing the next generation KDE from the ground up. It’s a task that separates the core developers from the hangers on, and the architects of the new desktop are a pretty dedicated group. There are far too many developers currently active in KDE for me to introduce them all, but here’s a quick glance at what a small handful of them are working on for the next major version of KDE."

KnowledgeTree on Monday announced the release of version 3.4 of the KnowledgeTree Document Management System. This new version includes various Web 2.0 collaboration features such as tagging, tag Clouds and Really Simple Syndication.

Not sure of the line between free software and proprietary software? Then ask Richard Stallman. A virtual Richard Stallman that is, which runs on a Linux system and alerts users to software they are using that doesn't meet the strict GPL line.

The El Dorado of programming languages. As a Java programmer, if you spend some time with Lisp -- this lost city of gold -- you'll discover many techniques that will change the way you code, for the better.

At the Communications Ecosystem Conference today The Linux Foundation, the new organization formed last month from the merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group, today announced availability of its Carrier Grade Linux 4.0 Specification. In existence since 2002 and now in its fourth version, the Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) Specification consists of over 250 individual requirements that cover seven categories of Performance, Hardware, Standards, Serviceability, Availability, Security and Clustering. The primary changes to the new CGL 4.0 Specification are alignment with the SCOPE Alliance's Carrier Grade Profile and tighter requirements around compliance.

Sharif Farsi Web Company published here Sunday the Farsi Linux for Children & Young Adults. Sharif Farsi Linux for Children and Young Adults is designed for primary school and intermediate high school student.

The NZ chapter of Linuxchix has just been set up for all New Zealand women interested in Linux and Free Software.

We have a website: http://linuxchix.org.nz, a mailing list: http://lists.catalyst.net.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nz-lin... a planet: http://planet.linuxchix.org.nz

And we're planning an install fest, as well as monthly meetups to talk about free software and eat chocolate.

In what they claim is the largest-ever open source deal, collaboration developer Open-Xchange and web hosting company 1&1 Internet have announced a partnership to deliver over one million hosted business email and collaboration accounts using Open-Xchange's Smart Collaboration technology.

According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, factory revenue in the worldwide server market grew 5.2% year over year to $15.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2006, marking the third consecutive quarter of positive growth. Worldwide server unit shipment growth was flat in 4Q06 when compared with the year-ago period. For the full year 2006, worldwide server revenue grew 2.0% to $52.3 billion, while worldwide unit shipments grew 5.9% to 7.5 million units. This represents the highest annual server revenue since the market peaked in 2000.

McKesson has joined with Red Hat to introduce the Red Hat Enterprise Healthcare Platform, a cost-effective open source information technology solution with services designed to meet the mission-critical demands of healthcare. “The Red Hat solution offers our customers a reliable, affordable platform for delivering safe, high-quality patient care using McKesson’s clinical applications,” said Michael J. Simpson, chief technology officer for McKesson Provider Technologies. “The introduction of a high-value, open platform designed specifically for the needs of healthcare IT represents a major step forward in encouraging the use of open source technologies instead of closed, proprietary technologies that are costly to acquire, maintain and scale.”

Those who are following government initiatives to mandate the use of open standards and/or open source will be aware that Denmark is one of the countries that has been in the legislative forefront. Here's an update of what's new.

McKesson Corp. is selling its clinical applications for doctors' offices and hospitals based on Red Hat's Enterprise Linux operating system, offering what McKesson says is a less-expensive alternative to non-open source platforms.

Longtime acquisition suspect PolyServe has been eaten by HP. HP today picked up the Oregon-based software maker for an undisclosed sum. Should the deal close as expected in the next months, PolyServe's products and staff will be tucked into HP's StorageWorks division. This acquisition builds on a long-term partnership between the two companies.

You never forget your first. Whether it's your first car, or your first significant other, or your first day of college, they say you never forget your first. That's not always true, of course, but I do remember my first: Softlanding Linux Systems, one of the earliest GNU/Linux distributions, and progenitor of the Slackware distribution. It came on a few dozen floppy images, and took forever to install. Jump into the Astonishing GNU/Linux Time Machine, and via the magic of qemu and iBiblio, you too can experience the earliest days of GNU/Linux. It'll only take an hour. I'll have you back by supper.

A Linux-powered humanoid robot has been interviewed on 8-Fi, a French television magazine devoted to new technology. The hour-long show features Aldebaran Robotics's Nao robot conversing with company president Bruno Maisonnier, followed by a panel discussion on the state of robotics by several French robotics experts.

The second day of FOSDEM 2007 was as busy, if not more, as the first day. Many face-to-face interactions, of great benefit to cooperation between developers and projects, and time spend on hacking on and promoting KDE. The KDE developer room was well used, first by an Educational workshop, well led by Anne-Marie Mahfouf, followed by some more talks. Topics included Krita's present and future by Bart Coppens, a KDE 4 talk by Jos Poortvliet and a KDE e.V. talk by Sebastian Kügler. Read on for a report on day two.

Welcome to this year's 9th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! This week's issue starts with a first look at VectorLinux 5.8 SOHO, an enhanced edition of the Slackware-based distribution designed for small businesses and home users. The news section then covers a variety of topics, including a couple of recent "distro wars" between Ubuntu and its competitors, reasons for the longer than expected delay of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, an announcement about the upcoming Community edition of Puppy Linux, and a surprise merge between two Slackware-based projects. Information about the upcoming releases of SabayonLinux 3.3 and Pardus Linux 2007.1, followed by the usual list of new distributions, concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. Happy reading!

Folding@Home is a project at Stanford University, based on the distributed computing model. When installed, it runs in the background, using idle CPU cycles to compute protein folding. The project aims to find cure for diseases related to mis-folding of proteins.

This article shows an efficient way to implement a slightly more relaxed model of immutability, using normal cached fields whose values can still be accessed safely without synchronization.