Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

As they make software and hardware purchases, governments are creatures of habit. They form long relationships with IT vendors and stick with them so they can keep their IT systems running with minimal interruptions. And while new technologies might be intriguing, governments often shy away from major IT changes because they have little willingness to take even the slightest risks of introducing a glitch into their infrastructures. So they stay with the companies and technologies they know as they undergo their traditional Request for Proposal (RFP) contract bidding and acquisition procedures.

Forty years ago this summer, a programmer sat down and knocked out in one month what would become one of the most important pieces of software ever created. In August 1969, Ken Thompson, a programmer at AT&T subsidiary Bell Laboratories, saw the month-long departure of his wife and young son as an opportunity to put his ideas for a new operating system into practice. He wrote the first version of Unix in assembly language for a wimpy Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) PDP-7 minicomputer, spending one week each on the operating system, a shell, an editor and an assembler.

Security specialist Jacques Copeau has analysed a number of well-known PHP applications for susceptibility to the MIME sniffing issue in Internet Explorer. This "protective" feature, originally introduced as a security measure in Internet Explorer 6 and 7, can in fact cause the browser to treat an image as HTML and execute embedded scripts.

After 5 months of hard work the Amarok team is proud to announce the next major release, Amarok 2.1, codenamed "Let There Be Light". Since the release of 2.0 we have gotten a lot of feedback and have already integrated some of it in 2.0.1 and 2.0.2. This new release includes a new look, many improvements, new features and brings back old favorites.

Linux is easy to customize, is stable, malware-resistant, lightweight, and both user- and developer-friendly. So why do OEM Linux netbook implementations suck so badly? Matt Hartley analyzes the exploding netbook market, and why Linux is struggling to gain traction.

Canonical (Ubuntu), Xandros, Linpus, and Red Flag announced they will deliver versions of their Linux distributions based on the open source Moblin v2 stack and application framework for Intel Atom-based netbooks. Novell, meanwhile, demonstrated its previously announced Moblin v2 version of SUSE Linux on Acer and MSI netbooks.

The Canola project announced that they are going to license their project with additional permissions to GPLv3 in order to provide their code "in different kinds of business models and product offerings, especially in CE devices." This is the first times that this particular permission is being used. The GPLv3 license is an important one and developers should be aware of the facts and motivations in this particular case.

The KDE Release Machine seems unstoppable these days! Today brings you KDE 4.2.4, the monthly update to the 4.2 series of KDE. KDE 4.2.4 is the recommended update for all those using KDE 4.2, or rather anything in the KDE 4 series. Those that stayed away from KDE 4 until now might give it a whirl as well to see if KDE 4 is up to their tasks.

Xandros has spent the better part of a decade trying to take Linux to the masses and build itself up as a serious contender in the commercial Linux racket. And now, after the advent of Linux-based netbooks and an evolving new class of devices that are being dubbed smartbooks, Xandros is getting another chance at going mainstream and taking Linux with it. Even if people don't know they're using Linux. The Computex trade show is going on this week in Taipei, Taiwan, where a lot of laptops, netbooks, smartbooks, and other tiny computing devices are designed and manufactured, and Xandros is there, running around with partners demonstrating its Moblin 2.0-compliant Linux variant and the applications that run atop it as well as talking up its partnerships with Intel (and its Atom processor) as well as Freescale Semiconductor and Qualcomm (which are making smartbooks based on ARM processors).

RealNetworks has extended the Moblin version of its RealPlayer streaming media player to support a variety of netbook-oriented processors and Linux distributions. RealPlayer for Mobile Devices will be offered with Ubuntu, as well as fast-boot "instant-on" distributions from Xandros, Phoenix Technologies, and DeviceVM (pictured), says Real.

As promised by its CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems has announced the Java Store at JavaOne 2009. The service, previously code-named Project Vector, is billed as a "consumer-facing store front enabling the discovery and purchase of Java and JavaFX applications". The service as launched at the developer conference is currently in private beta and is only available to US developers. According to a FAQ on the store, there are no plans to expand the Java Store outside the US before 2010.

Under Oracle's charge, Sun Microsystems will fuel PCs and phones with Java and JavaFX, challenging Google's Android on netbooks, Oracle's chief Larry Ellison has said. The CEO has also made it clear he expects the Sun-backed OpenOffice project - and potential challenger to Microsoft's Office - to dump AJAX and switch to Sun's JavaFX for its web interface. Ellison declaration means he's backing an emerging and largely Sun-only technology, while the majority of the web and the industry uses AJAX. Unlike the rest of Sun's Java language and platform, JavaFX has not gone through Java standards body the Java Community Process (JCP).

At Computex, both Novell and Xandros have announced plans to base future operating systems for netbooks on Moblin 2, the Intel developed Linux for Atom processors, recently moved under the aegis of the Linux Foundation. There are also reports that Canonical will announce a Moblin 2 based Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Moblin 2, which was recently released as a "user experience" beta, has won praise for its user interface, based on work by Opened Hand (an Intel 2008 acquisition) and for its rapid boot times.

OpenBill 1.2, a Java-based invoicing and contract management application, has been released by South African developer Jumping Bean. The new release includes both a number of bugfixes as well as a few key feature additions.

URL rewriting allows you to tailor URLs for search engine optimization, maintain backwards compatibility with old archives, and make your URLs short and friendly. Sukrit Dhandhania's introduction us to Apache's powerful mod-rewrite for customizing and managing URLs.

Developer Michael Prokop has announced the release of grml 2009.05, codenamed Lackdose-Allergie. grml is a Debian based Linux distribution that's specifically aimed at system administrators and users of text tools, such as awk, sed, grep, zsh, mutt[ng], slrn, vim and many others. The release features several new boot options, including the persistent boot option which allows users to easily store their settings and reuse them on reboot, avoiding the older config framework. The new findiso option searches for ISO files on all disks and the bsd option allows users to boot the minimal MirOS BSD operating system and run the minimalistic hardware detection tool (HDT).

Sun is set to launch the latest version of OpenSolaris, tuning it for the enterprise with a new support contract, processor support, and networking and storage technology. Sun, which is in the process of being acquired by Oracle, is expected to introduce OpenSolaris 2009.06 on Monday at the CommunityOne developer conference in San Francisco. OpenSolaris is the open source version of Solaris, and previously it has been aimed mainly at developers and as a platform for testing features that will later make their way into Solaris itself.

Red Hat has opened Sun Microsystems' annual week of Java activities with an application server strategy targeting fellow open-sourcer SpringSource. The company, which made its name in the Linux business, has added a third server to its JBoss application server and middleware family targeting what it called "mid-sized" workloads. JBoss Enterprise Web Platform slots between Red Hat's existing JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and the Enterprise Web Server, while retaining the enterprise-edition's clustering, caching, persistence, and security the company said Monday.

An ASUS Eee PC prototype with a Snapdragon chip-set and running the open source Android operating system has been sighted at Computex Taipei, the Taiwan trade show. Qualcomm refers to designs using the ARM based Snapdragon chip-set as 'smartbooks' and expects to see Snapdragon based smartbook devices available in Autumn 2009. The chip-set/smartbook specification lists 3G connectivity, Wi-Fi, 3D graphics, Bluetooth and GPS among its defining features.

iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian, WinMo, Android -- the world is awash in smartphone platforms, and this fragmented landscape is a pain for developers, who have to build an app four or five times in order to reach all users, as well as enterprises, which have to pay for the work. However, if the mobile browser world were to rally around WebKit, could it be the answer to simplified mobile development?