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In my last article, Quick and Dirty with Open Office Base, I described my initial experiences with building a simple database application for my wife in Open Office Base, having had no prior experience with the program. In that article, I described how easy it is to get started, and how easy it is to build usable software with Base. In this article, I'm going to discuss mitigating one of Base's major weaknesses by connecting it to an external SQL back-end.

The radio stations Deutschlandradio and Radio Orange received the awards from the Free Software Foundation Europe and Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure because they transmitted over the Internet in the Ogg Vorbis media container format. The free Radio Orange 94.0 in Vienna and dradio.de (Deutschlandfunk in Cologne and Deutschlandradio Kultur in Berlin) were honored with the awards (and a cake) the afternoon of March 31 under the slogan "rOGG on!"

Today I finally managed to get GNOME Shell installed so I could get a preview of what is to come on the Linux desktop (at least through the eyes of GNOME). This new GNOME will arrive sometime this year (2010) and will, I promise you, change the way you use your desktop. Finally someone has looked at the current desktop metaphor and said “It’s over!” Think about it, the current paradigm has been in play since, when, Windows 95? Earlier you say? CDE? Let’s stick with Windows 95, because that really solidified the whole “taskbar, start button, icons, notification try” metaphor in the eyes of the public. Well, public, that is about to change - drastically.

Covering SCO is a marathon, not a sprint, so after each big win, I tend to savor the moment, goofing off and enjoying a rest, knowing as I do that they never quit and there will be more awfulness to come.

That was the last blurry video image that Agent Cummings saw that might arguably have been Frank. It hardly mattered, though, because he knew that by then Frank was long gone.   The question, of course, was where?

CodeWeavers and Wine-Reviews have put together a special dealcode just for gamers and especially Transgamers. So if your a current or ex Transgaming Cedega customer and you would like to take the leap and switch over to CrossOver Games now is the perfect time to do so.

A key expert on hosted Exchange Server and SaaS-centric companies has joined Open-Xchange. The move could help Open-Xchange to boost the popularity of its open source email platform. Here's why.

A recent message on the UbuntuOne mailing list announces that Canonical has teamed up with Funambol, an established software stack that synchronizes thousands of mobile phones and other devices who have built a community around different client plugins, virtually supporting the majority of the existing software on all platforms that have contacts (Thunderbird, Outlook, Mac OS X Mail, etc). That means that UbuntuOne gets mobile phones sync support, but unfortunately the new service will only be part of the UbuntuOne paid plans. The service can already be used by everyone as it's already in public alpha. If you want to try it out, you'll get a free 30-days trial but these 30 days of trial will only start counting once Ubuntu 10.04 LTS will be released so until then you can use it for free.

What sucks more than the force that keeps Texas attached to the rest of the US? The iPad.

For those from the Mandriva camp, you'll want to head on over to your favorite mirror to check out the freshly released beta of Mandriva Linux 2010.1. Mandriva 2010.1 Beta 1 is running with GNOME 2.30 that was released just this past week, provides a preview of GNOME Shell for a glimpse of what is coming with GNOME 3.0 later this year, and there is a wealth of other package updates too.

The Plasma Javascript Jam Session is a friendly competition that aims to reward creators of original, interesting and beautiful Plasma widgets written in Javascript with some great prizes and community recognition. The competion concluded on March 31st with 11 successful submissions making the deadline. Judging has commenced, and it will not be easy: many excellent submissions were sent in ranging from the entertaining to the highly useful. Ranging in size from a few dozen lines to a few thousand lines of Javascript code, the submissions showcase a variety of ideas and possibilities.

Many computer users have an insatiable appetite to deepen their understanding of computer operating systems and computer software. Linux users are no different in that respect. At the same time as developing a huge range of open source software, the Linux community fortunately has also written a vast range of documentation in the form of books, guides, tutorials, HOWTOs, man pages, and other help to aid the learning process. Some of this documentation is intended specifically for a newcomer to Linux, or those that are seeking to move away from a proprietary world and embrace freedom.

Faced with disappointing sales, HP and Dell are scaling back investments in 10-inch netbooks, with HP possibly quitting the format entirely, according to DigiTimes. Other motivators were said to include expectations for re-invigorated sales of larger, more expensive notebooks fueled by a recovering economy.

The developers of Songbird, the open source and cross platform media player, have announced they are dropping Linux support. In an announcement on the company blog, VP of Engineering Georges Auberger said that "After careful consideration, we’ve come to the painful conclusion that we should discontinue support for the Linux version of Songbird". Auberger cited prioritisation issues for the small engineering team which have meant that the Linux version of Songbird has fallen behind the other versions on Windows and Mac. The company has therefore decided to focus on the Windows and Mac versions and delivering new features and device support on those versions.

As long as I am using Kopete, sending messages, etc. everything is as it should be. No connection problems at all. As soon as I let the program go idle, it starts disconnecting every ten minutes, giving an Error 17 message, like clockwork. It always reconnects on it’s own, but as you can see from the screenshot, you could set your watch by when it disconnects from the Yahoo server.

Final Demand. Dear Linux, We own you. Pay up or else. Love, SCO - Merc Crimperman, Bizarre Cathedral

Ubuntu just released the beta 1 version of their new LTS (Long Term Support) Distribution, Lucid 10.04. The theme is based on "light" and it looks great. Here's what to expect and what not to expect when you first install this new flavor of Ubuntu: The first thing you notice when you launch the live CD is Ubuntu's new logo. Don't worry, they still have the basic logo but they added some new typography and use the logo like a registration mark. They went with the black desktop theme for their default which is fine, but they moved something around. The window manager buttons went from the right side to the left, which is difficult at first if you are not used to it.

Mel Gorman posted the seventh version of his Memory Compaction patches asking, "are there any further obstacles to merging?" The patches, first posted in May of 2007, provide a mechanism for moving GFP_MOVABLE pages into a smaller number of pageblocks, reducing externally fragmented memory. Mel explains that 'compaction' is another method of defragmenting memory, "for example, lumpy reclaim is a form of defragmentation as was slub 'defragmentation' (really a form of targeted reclaim). Hence, this is called 'compaction' to distinguish it from other forms of defragmentation."

Gnome 2.30 was released a few days ago which means the next version will be (or should be) Gnome 3 (which will come with Gnome Shell). I recently came across some Notification Area mockups which might become reality. Gnome 3 might start using monochrome colors in the System Status Area - Ubuntu style (or we could call it Mac OSX style):

From February 20th to the 21st, Linux enthusiasts from the greater Los Angeles area converged at the Westin Hotel near Los Angeles Airport to celebrate Linux and Free Software at the annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE8X). KDE was there once again showing attendees the work of the KDE community. The team was showing off Plasma Desktop and a prototype of the Plasma Netbook workspace. There were four new volunteers who did a great job representing KDE for the first time - Jonathan Prien, Wayne Speir, Aaron Reichman, and Barrington Daltrey. A special mention goes also to Gary Greene, who shipped out the KDE booth box for use at SCALE. Aaron Johnson gave a talk "A Basic Introduction to KDE", attended by about thirty people, that was well recieved.