Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

What if you didn't need the Internet or a telephone system to communicate electronically with your friends? Imagine you could independently share electronic information with friends through wireless devices without external hardware or software. Think of how excited people get about checking in with friends using Twitter and Facebook. Now, with the right software and your current hardware, people could do those same kinds of activities in their local community--without any need for the Internet or the restrictions of Internet service providers. People could use their wireless devices for personal communications where there is no Internet or when there is no Internet, such as in a disaster situation, or when public networks are banned, such as in places like Iran. We believe that having independent control of our communications networks can be a valuable resource that opens new possibilities for communities.

If you are a Facebook fan then you must have used the official Facebook desktop application.The app is good but it’s not detailed and offers only limited features. You can’t see live notifications of new stories, can’t post a comment and if you need to upload a photo you have to open Facebook in the browser all the way. If you are not quite satisfied with the official Facebook desktop application or other desktop clients have a look at Facebook –Photo uploader. It is a new desktop client for Facebook, released by Adobe with really useful features.

In the first two parts of this series we learned how to build a custom Linux kernel. But there are so many options it's easy to get lost. Today we'll clarify some of the more important places where it's easy to go wrong.

It was well over a year ago now that news of the Symbian operating system--found on approximately half of global smartphones--going open source broke. The news was interpreted as particularly important to Nokia's forward-looking Symbian strategy, but after all this time, an open source version of Symbian's platform is still only in beta testing.

Richard Stallman demanded the EU cut MySQL loose from Oracle yesterday in an open letter to Brussels' competition supremo Neelie Kroes. The self-described software freedom activist's intervention came just a day after MySQL founder Monty Widenius made a similar call, saying that Oracle could offset the EU's go-slow examination of its purchase of Sun by simply putting MySQL on the block. In yesterday's letter, also signed by James Love and Malini Aisola of Knowledge Ecology International and Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group Stallman says that Oracle's objective in borging MySQL is to prevent further market share erosion and "to protect the high prices now charged for its proprietary database software licenses and services".

In part 1 we learned some neat tricks using OpenSSH and SSHFS for fast remote logins and file sharing. Today in Part 2 we learn how easy it is to configure OpenSSH to use secure public key authentication instead of a password login.

As a homeschooling family, my wife and I are very involved in our children's education and since we're both a couple of nerds, much of our children's education is done on the computer. I use Linux for work almost exclusively so I was a bit curious to see if there were any good children's educational programs for Linux; it turns out that there are some very good ones and I'm going to discuss 3 of them today: Tux Paint, Tux Typing, and Tux of Math Command. Do you sense a theme developing here?

The Fedora Project released the beta version of Fedora 12 "Constantine," adding the Moblin desktop environment and speed optimizations for i686 and the Intel Atom. The latest version of the Red Hat-related Linux distribution also offers IPv6 support plus enhanced Bluetooth, virtualization, multimedia, and power management.

According to a self-administered survey, Enterprises are still at risk from common security 'gaps.' Novell today released the first summary of data from its Threat Assessment Tool and the view isn't pretty. The results show that "many enterprises are still highly vulnerable to preventable security threats. To date, the survey has revealed significant vulnerabilities, particularly in the areas of inadequate data protection, insufficient mobile access policies, and lack of application control and system integrity for endpoint devices."

As expected, bookseller Barnes & Noble has announced a dual-screen e-book reader dubbed the Nook. The company has also entered into a partnership with Adobe to work on e-book standards.

The Puppy Linux project has released a 4.3.1 bugfix upgrade for last month's major 4.3 release of the popular, lightweight GNU/Linux distro. Puppy Linux 4.3, which has been rebuilt with a new "Woof" build system and PPM package manager, has received a number of positive reviews.

Red Hat has announced the first and only beta of its next Linux development release, Fedora 12. Emperor Constantine the Great knew a good means to hold a crumbling empire together when he saw it - namely, Christianity - and by code-naming the 12th release of Fedora after Constantine, Red Hat is by no means suggesting that the Linux empire is crumbling or that the warring between the political, military, and religious powers that led to Constantine's ascension to rule is somehow also going on in the Linux arena. Rather, Red Hat is emphasizing Constantine's openness to new ideas.

Marvell has announced four processor families -- Armada 100, Armada 500, Armada 600, and Armada 1000 -- based on ARM cores. Touted as "a top to bottom solution for mobile computing and intelligent devices," the SoCs offer single or dual cores with clock speeds from 400MHz to 1.2GHz, the company says.

Following a number of Windows Mobile 6.5 based phones, smartphone market newcomer Acer has now announced its first Android model. It's based on a Snapdragon processor, likely clocked at 1 GHz, with 256 MB RAM. The Android 1.6 operating system (code named "Donut") is housed on its internal 512 MB Flash drive and there is a microSDHC slot for adding extra storage. The 3.5 inch capacitive touch screen has a resolution of 800 × 480 pixels.

Technology companies negotiate a particularly messy obstacle course from the moment of conception -- jumping hurdles associated with venture capital, fending off and holding their own with fierce (and worthy) competitors, constantly changing and innovating products and services to meet the demands of the customer base. Open source companies have an additional complicating factor -- the business model is mysterious to many potential customers, and competitors (fierce, worthy, or otherwise) are often 800 pound gorillas with names and logos recognizable to CTO, CIO and Luddite alike.

Italian remote access specialist NoMachine announced a version of its X Windows-based, Linux-compatible NX Remote Access solution for small businesses. The NX Small Business Server, which offers up to 10 concurrent sessions, incorporates last month's release of NX 3.4.0, which added multi-monitor support.

SpringSource (which, it's easy to forget, is now a division of VMware), introduced Spring 3.0 today, a major new version of the company’s Java development framework. SpringSource is targeting developers focused on web and service-based applications with the new release. This release of Spring's framework is the first since VMware's acquisition of the company, and version 3.0 is backward compatible with version 2.5. It has full REST support for web applications.

Just how important are computer operating systems, anyway? We're going to get an indication Thursday morning, when Microsoft Corp. is scheduled to launch Windows 7, successor to the much-maligned Windows Vista and what many critics believe is the replacement for Windows XP that Vista should have been. XP will be exactly eight years old next Sunday, and that is kind of old. In late August, Apple Inc. launched Snow Leopard, which has had a good reception among users and critics. I've reviewed Snow Leopard and shall review Windows 7 in due course. My early impressions of Win7 are positive, however.

MontaVista Software announced a new release of its Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) 4.0 compliant Linux distribution for networking customers, adding support for 4G wireless networks including LTE and WiMAX. MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) 5.1 also integrates OpenSAF High Availability (HA) capabilities and is the first to offer virtual routing and forwarding, says MontaVista.

Monty Widenius, creator of the free MySQL database and for years chief developer of the namesake company, does not want to see his creation handed over to Oracle. In a press release, he writes that he shares the EU Commission's concerns about Oracle's takeover of MySQL from its present owner Sun.