Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

A federal judge late Friday refused to restore class-action status to the Vista Capable lawsuit, handing Microsoft Corp. its second major victory in the case in the last two months. U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman denied a motion by the plaintiffs to recertify a smaller group of consumers in the suit that has accused Microsoft of misleading PC buyers in 2006 and 2007 by letting computer makers slap the "Vista Capable" sticker on machines that could run only Home Basic.

The final draft of the revised version of ECMAScript - better known by the Sun Microsystems-trademarked name of its most popular dialect, JavaScript - has been published by the ECMA and is now available as ECMA-262 for final interoperability and compatibility testing. This version, developed under the working name of ECMAScript 3.1, will be known as ECMAScript, Fifth Edition, and will supercede the current formally established standard, ECMAScript, Third Edition. ECMAScript, Fourth Edition was never completed, but - according to the ECMA - much of the work done on it has been carried into the Fifth Edition.

ABI Research predicts that Linux and "alternative operating systems" (OSes) will overtake Windows XP in netbook sales by 2012. Reasons cited by ABI include the arrival of low-end ARM-based netbooks, as well as mobile stacks such as the Linux-based Android that are suited for these platforms.

I wanted to keep a low key on that, but the news hit the press and the avalanche started mounting. I have submitted for approval to OSI a license on behalf of my good friend and client Mr. Leonardo Chiariglione, convenor of the ISO/IEC JTC1 WG11 (also known as MPEG).

You've been hearing about Linux and you're curious. Did you know you can try it out for free? That you can install it inside of Windows just like any Windows program, or that you can try it without installing it? Carla Schroder shows how in this new series for absolute Linux beginners.

LXer Feature: 12-Apr-2009

There is a silly myth that Linux hardware support is poor and requires a lot of manual tweaking. In reality it is excellent, and for the majority of devices is easier and better than any other operating system. It still pays to shop carefully; Matt Hartley guides us past the rough spots.

IDC is projecting that spending on Linux-related software will grow 21 percent this year, and 23.6 percent through 2013, compared to two- and five-percent growth, respectively, for the general software market. Sponsored by the Linux Foundation, the study sees the recession, virtualization, and cloud computing as key drivers behind Linux.

President Barack Obama is tapping another RIAA attorney into the Justice Department. Monday's naming of Ian Gershengorn, to become the department's deputy assistant attorney of the Civil Division, comes more than a week after nearly two dozen public interest groups, trade pacts and library coalitions urged the new president to quit filling his administration with lawyers plucked from the Recording Industry Association of America.

The results of the election for Debian Project Leader have been announced and Steve McIntyre has retained his leadership of the free software GNU/Linux distribution.

The Open Source Business Conference, held at San Francisco's Palace Hotel, draws a lot of lawyers, from both corporate legal departments and law firms. Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credit is available. Jeff Norman, a partner at the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, delivered a talk on "Shims and Shams: Firewalling Proprietary Code in a Copyleft Context." This talk gives some insights into the current thinking on how difficult it can be to create a combined software product using both copyleft and proprietary code.

Why restrict yourself to merely carrying around your data on a thumb drive? Take your entire operating system on your flash drive with the excellent portable operating systems you'll find inside this week's Hive Five.

On Thursday the New York Times reported that 100 IBM lawyers were holed up in a hotel in Silicon Valley poring over the Sun intellectual property portfolio. Four days later the proposed deal has collapsed, even though Big Blue's desire to get its hands on Sun's IP is said to be one of the primary factors behind its move for the company. So what is going on here? Have those lawyers found a big problem? Are the anti-trust issues too much of an obstacle. Or is this just a case of IBM playing hardball? Maybe it is the latter. I can't help thinking of an article that Andrew Watson wrote for IAM a while back. One which I have quoted before.

Scientific Learning Corp. announced its plans to contribute free neuroscience- and technology-based activities from the Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant family of products, as well as newly created lessons, to FreeReading.net. FreeReading.net is a free, research-based open source reading program for the elementary grades. "We're excited to partner with an open source instructional program developed by leading researchers and curriculum experts to help educators around the world teach kids to read," said Andy Myers, CEO of Scientific Learning. "At Scientific Learning, we believe there are two sides to effective learning -- a research-based curriculum and a well-prepared brain that is able to capture, process and retain information. Through this partnership, we can provide teachers with easy access to free curriculum that helps students improve the underlying cognitive skills that build brain capacity and accelerate learning."

Most vendors are already preparing for a tough Christmas. Those selling Linux-based solutions, however, can expect to spread plenty of holiday cheer, according to a new report from IDC, "The Opportunity for Linux in a New Economy." (PDF) Even as Red Hat recently talked up its impressive quarterly results, it's important to recognize that not all of Linux's success can be seen in corporate financial results.

One of the things about getting older is that you learn to ignore things until you have to do something about them. It’s a learned efficiency, I suppose, rationing your increasingly precious time out to the unceasing demands upon it. I finally realized I have to do some serious thinking about cloud computing. “Hang on a minute, don’t you work at Google ?” I hear you say. Well, yes, but in my defense many of the people who work at Google don’t have anything to do with cloud computing. Some of us have to keep the conference rooms clean, write Open Source/Free Software, things of that nature.

Time Warner Cable has increased all of its Internet data caps, added some new ones, and generously offered to limit overage charges to $75/month. Perhaps that's because the company's broadband operations are actually earning more cash and have lower expenses than they did in 2007, making TWC's stated rationale for the caps less tenable.

University of Utah officials say a computer virus has infected more than 700 campus computers, including those at the school's three hospitals. University health sciences spokesman Chris Nelson said the outbreak of the Conficker worm, which can slow computers and steal personal information, was first detected Thursday. By Friday, the virus had infiltrated computers at the hospitals, medical school, and colleges of nursing, pharmacy and health.

We're used to thinking of Linux distributions being set in stone. They're either KDE or Gnome, use a certain kernel and bundle certain applications. But this doesn't have to be the case. If you find yourself making the same adjustments each time you install a new distribution, it's worth creating your own customised version. Revisor is a tool that lets you do just this, and in this tutorial, we'll show you how...

I was pricing a low-end desktop computer the other day. When configuring it, I noticed that if I added a four-year warranty, it would cost more than the entire system! We've really come to the point where computer hardware is like a plastic fork. If a tine breaks off, it gets thrown away. Sadly, although throwing away plastic forks is rough on the environment, used computers are so much more so.