Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

If proprietary software is the proverbial dam, Open Source is the raging torrent pushing to break through one might even continue the analogy to identify certain figures in the proprietary world as the little boy with his finger in the hole, with more nefarious intent, of course. More and more cities, countries, and even continents are embracing Open Source with open arms and, given the analogy above, snorkels and as of last Thursday, one more municipality has been fitted for fins.

If you've run older PowerPC-based Macs in your businesses you may be wondering what to do with them now that Apple has made the transition to Intel, and the G3, G4 and G5 processors are beginning to show their age. Paul Rubens suggests scrapping OS X, and turning the machines into servers or workstations running Linux.

Intel has worked hard and spent a lot of money over the years to shape its image: It is the company that celebrates its quest to make computer chips ever smaller, faster and cheaper with a quick five-note jingle at the end of its commercials. As Renee J. James of Intel puts it, “You can’t just throw hardware out there into the world” without accompanying software. But as Intel tries to expand beyond the personal computer chip business, it is changing in subtle ways. For the first time, its long unheralded software developers, more than 3,000 of them, have stolen some of the spotlight from its hardware engineers. These programmers find themselves at the center of Intel’s forays into areas like mobile phones and video games.

Mandriva, the Linux vendor, has announced "Click'n'Backup", its own web based backup system. The service, reminiscent of the recently launched Canonical's Ubuntu One, includes online secure storage space and a backup and restore tool. Unlike Ubuntu One, the backup and restore tools are available for non-Mandriva Linux systems, Windows and Mac OS X. The system can be configured for backup, or as a shared and synchronised file store, allowing users to keep files up to date on multiple machines.

The Ubuntu Developer Summit, currently running in Barcelona, is reported to have three sessions dealing with Google's Android operating system, fuelling speculation over what Karmic Koala, Ubuntu 9.10, will offer in the way of Android compatibility. A specification page on the Unbuntu Wiki for the Android Execution Environment, suggest that the plan is to allow Android applications to execute in their own chroot'ed environment with the non-X11 graphics of the mobile operating system being modified to display either via the X server, or through some other display mechanism. To a user, this would probably appear as a desktop window which contains an Android desktop.

Some days, like it or not, you need a lawyer. For most business purposes, picking the right law firm isn’t usually that big of a deal. Chances are you already have at least an idea of how to find a contract lawyer, a tax law specialist or a real-estate attorney. But what if your programmers are using open-source code that’s licensed under two different licenses? What if you’re concerned with how a patent might affect open-source software your company is already using? Or let’s say a company based in Utah decides that you’ve put its proprietary code into Linux, who do you turn to then? Now, what should you be looking for in a law firm?

SourceForge, the open-source project host, has removed the pages of the rtmpdump stream-recording software from its network in response to a cease-and-desist notice from Adobe. The program uses the Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) to record not only streamed Flash media but also encrypted streams. Adobe added encryption to its proprietary protocol on introducing Flash Media Server 3 in order to prevent the recording of Flash content, and defined RTMPE (RMTP encrypted) for the purpose. Adobe takes the view that its copy protection can be circumvented by the RTMPE support incorporated in rtmpdump and, in its cease-and-desist notice, invokes the [Digital Millennium Copyright Act to prevent the distribution of the software.

As the global economic crisis deepens, companies are considering options they might once have rejected out of hand in order to cut costs. Open source vendors have long waved the lower-TCO banner, and the recession seems to fueling business in the sector. It's not quite clear, though, whether a switch to open source will result in cost savings in the long run.

One of the reasons I admire RMS is because of his complete integrity and consistency. He simply will not compromise on his principles, even if it leads to the loss of support from those who are not so rigorous. I'm also impressed by the steadfastness of his vision: he does not flit from one trendy idea to another, but sticks unswervingly to his core beliefs. But even I am astonished by this July 1986 interview with him, which could have been conducted yesterday..

Netbooks are really becoming a part of the market where all sorts of companies are trying out new things. For instance, earlier this week, we had a review of a MIPS-based Loongson-2 netbook from China, last Monday we reported on Acer implementing a Vmedia drive into a netbook, a while back we had a multitouch LCD touchpad netbook, and we've had more. Now we have one that uses an x86 SoC that doesn't come from AMD/Intel/VIA, and can run on... AA batteries.

In the UK, it's a public holiday, and The H's editor in chief has been watching a movie and wondering if the Star Trek universe is a useful model for the future of open source... A hostile species finds its source of power destroyed. In an attempt to find détente, it reaches out to the alliance which has defended the freedom of many of other species against the hostile species' own aggressive acts for decades. This is the opening of Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country, but it could also easily be the recent history of Microsoft, open source and Linux.

In February, the Swiss Federal Office for Construction and Logistics (Bundesamt für Bauten und Logistik, or BBL) sealed a deal with Microsoft for an estimated 35-million-dollars worth of licenses. Red Hat, along with 17 other Open Source enterprises, has filed an official complaint.

LXer Feature: 25-May-2009

Wine, you can't live with or without it, it seems, the Berkeley Linux Users Group put up a great review of Mephisto Backup v1.5, Juliet Kemp shows one way to protect your root password, and it looks like Sugar is ultimately going to win because no one is buying XO's with XP on them apparently. Google Chrome 2.0 was released this past week, its amazing to me that Chrome already has twice the browser market share than Opera but then we all know about market share statistics don't we?

There is no doubt the web is a powerful tool. And when this emerging social element is added it only creates more connectivity, virality and overall engagement with those who use it. This modern web is all about people, this is why we call it a "social web." Without people connecting, collaborating and engaging with one another the modern web wouldn't exist.

Mid-April, the four founders of The Pirate Bay were found guilty of being accessories to breaching copyright law; they aided in breaching copyright of 33 files. As a result, they were sentenced to one year in jail and a 2.75 million EUR fine. However, it was quickly revealed that the judge in the case was heavily biased, and ever since then there's been a search for a judge who is actually not involved with any pro-copyright groups or with the lawyers working for the entertainment industry in this case. Turns out that's actually kind of hard.

A well tagged MP3 collection makes everything from organization to playback easier. Keep reading for a closer look at your fellow readers' favorite tools for cleaning up their MP3 tags in this week's Hive Five. Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite tools for tagging your MP3 files. We've rounded up the top six rather than five—thanks to a particularly close call among the top candidates—and we're back to share and help you pick a program to get your MP3s in order.

[The third player listed there is a Linux version of. - Scott]

The Offline Update script collection, published by The H's sister publication in Germany, c't, and Torsten Wittrock, has been updated to version 6.0. Offline Update helps manage delivering the latest security updates to Windows PCs without lengthy downloads. The latest version, 6.0, contains updates for Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Windows Server 2003 and 2008, and their 64 bit versions where available. The scripts can also be used to freshen up Microsoft Office 2000, 2003, XP and 2007.

The Linux client for Unreal Tournament 3 should have been out over 550 days ago, but it appears to be dead with not even Epic Games being sure about its status. However, the independent developer that is responsible for porting this game's server and client over to Linux, Ryan Gordon, claims that the game is still on.

In late April, two weeks before Microsoft announced the biggest batch of layoffs in its history, the company experienced a lesser-noticed milestone that may have signaled even more about the state of its business. For the first time in Microsoft’s history, revenue in its Server & Tools division — which makes behind-the-scenes corporate systems and programming software — surpassed revenue in its Windows Client division, which makes the PC operating system responsible for much of the company’s past success.

Vancouver city council has endorsed the principles of making its data open and accessible to everyone where possible, adopting open standards for that data and considering open source software when replacing existing applications. "So it's great," said Andrea Reimer, the city councillor who proposed the motion that passed Thursday afternoon. "The local online community was all very, very happy, and now we just have to look forward on implementation and figuring sort of the order with which we do that."