Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

You've been reading Akkana Pecks's excellent articles on the nifty tricks you can do in the shell, and you're feeling the power. But one thing has you puzzled-- there are no file icons to click on, so how do you find your files? The Linux filesystem has an orderly structure; come on inside to learn how to navigate it effortlessly from the command line.

On January 20, 2009, Apple was awarded patent #7,479,949, titled "Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics." This patent potentially has the power to make life difficult for anybody developing hardware or software involving touch screens. It could also bring about an unwelcome repeat of some twenty-year-old history. But any attempt to enforce this patent risks repeating a twenty-year-old conclusion.

Developers soon will have a network to go to for developing principally open source projects and testing their software on multiple platforms. The planned Snakebite network is intended to "provide developers of open source projects complete and unrestricted access to as many different platforms, operating systems, architectures, compilers, devices, databases, tools, and applications that they may need in order to optimally develop their software," according to the Snakebite Web site, which also welcomes visitors to "the future of open source development."

Red Hat has launched a new open-source project the company said is aimed at making it easier for enterprises to move from proprietary Java-based middleware like Oracle WebLogic and IBM WebSphere to its JBoss Enterprise Middleware. The JBoss MASS (Migration Assistance) project -- launched as a community effort with Red Hat partners -- will provide software to help enterprises migrate to JBoss, as well as an online community to connect new JBoss customers with other customers and partners that have more experience working with the platform.

I spent some time talking with an Accenture veteran this morning, and came away with an intriguing idea: enable open-source projects to provide corporate benefits like health insurance to their developers so that they can ditch their day jobs to focus on their open-source passion. If you've ever started a small business, you know that getting "enterprise-grade" benefits like health insurance is very difficult. At Alfresco, for example, we ultimately joined a PEO (Professional Employer Organization) called Trinet [PDF], which aggregates many smaller companies to negotiate insurance plans with companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield that would normally not consider providing small companies insurance.

Hoping to bolster its position in the Web-based content management system market, Plain Black has rolled out a spruced-up version of its flagship product that makes it easier to maintain Web content and features a new point-of-sale cash register. The point-of-sale capability added to the 7.6 version of WebGUI now lets authorized users work with a virtual cash register. The new feature was added to make it easier for companies at remote events such as trade shows, for instance, to sell tickets and products directly to customers.

There was a time when it was enough for middleware to be just a Java J2EE application server stack. Times do change, though: J2EE is now called JavaEE, and middleware needs are more than just Java. To help meet the evolving requirements of the modern enterprise, Sun this week released its Glassfish Portfolio, which provides a JavaEE application server as well as an AMP (Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack, along with portal software and management tools.

The GUI released by HP for its Mini Mi netbook has been winning accolades for its high design standards. The interface offers pleasing shiny black eye candy that some sites are comparing to Apple design. The GUI provides an integrated starting point for many day-to-day tasks. You can search the web, visit your favorite bookmarks, and navigate through your applications (sorted by categories like Media, Work, and Play), all in a friendly task-oriented GUI. DownloadSquad writes that HP MediaStyle application looks a lot like Apple's FrontRow.

The world's biggest software maker has warned companies to expect an increase in "insider" security attacks by disgruntled, laid-off workers. Microsoft said so-called "malicious insider" breaches are on the rise and will worsen in the present downturn. "With 1.5 million predicted job losses in the US alone, there's an increased risk and exposure to these attacks," said Microsoft's Doug Leland.

One of the many problems with the patent offices around the world is that they are often unaware of prior art, granting patents for so-called inventions that are, in fact, common knowledge. In the computer world, there have been a number of efforts to provide prior art to patent offices, either after a patent is granted, in order to have it rescinded, or – even better – as part of the examination process. That's fine for a community with easy access to online source materials, but what about other fields, where prior art exists in other forms like books, or perhaps orally?

GroundWork Monitor has been updated to version 5.3 with improvements to key areas. The network management software from GroundWork is available as a free Community Edition, as well as two commercial versions, GroundWork Monitor Professional and GroundWork Monitor Enterprise. The new release includes version 3.06 of the Nagios monitoring tools. Updated components include MySQL, RRDTool, PHP and the reporting tool BRIT. Installation has been simplified for new Linux servers, as all prerequisites are now included in a single package.

Tech vendors who can't think of good things to say about their products fall back on "It's Green! Save Money And Be Hip!" But as always, Open Source is ahead of the curve. Tina Gasperson examines how Open Source software uses innovative methods such as less clothing, fewer showers, and agoraphobia to generate substantial energy savings.

Over the last weekend, the Plasma team held their second meeting in Porto, Portugal. The meeting was organised by Akademy Award winner Nuno Pinheiro inviting the Akademy Award-winning Plasma team to his home country. The meeting was kindly hosted by the Departamento de Engenharia Informatica (Department of Computer Sciences) of the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto. The Plasma team (and most probably many of the KDE users) are grateful for being provided this opportunity to collaborate on the desktop.

Choosing to release a piece of software under the terms of a free software license is an important step through which many programmers and writers first approach the free software community. However, the myriad of licenses available can sometimes confuse and disorient the user, sometimes making this first step much harder than it should be. Let’s try and make things clearer.

Cuba launched its own variant of the Linux computer operating system this week in the latest front of the communist island's battle against what it views as U.S. hegemony. The Cuban variant, called Nova, was introduced at a Havana computer conference on "technological sovereignty" and is central to the Cuban government's desire to replace the Microsoft software running most of the island's computers.

Students and teachers in select German schools can access personalized virtual desktops from home or school, using Kreisbildstelle Stade's currently piloting "Desque" system. The desktops run in a Hamburg datacenter, on quad-core Xeon servers, and are delivered over "standard" broadband using open source NX compression.

In reading through "Top 10 Responses to Why I Should Use Linux? A Linux Evangelists' Reference," I couldn't help but think that Linux needs better evangelists for its desktop crusade.

Open source software development in Russia is one of the most important directives for Igor Schegolev, the head of the ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation. On February 5, 2009 Igor Schegolev, the head of the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation, met with Werner Knoblich, Red Hat vice president for EMEA at the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation, and other industry leaders.

Access China and NEC Electronics are developing a "price sensitive" smartphone reference design incorporating the "new" Mini version of the Access Linux Platform (ALP) mobile stack. The touch- and 3G-enabled design will use NEC's ARM9-based MP201 system-on-chip (SoC), and a future design may use NEC's new ARM11-based Emma Mobile 1.

In case you haven't guessed by now, I like desktop Linux. I admit though that Linux is stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to dealing with proprietary media formats. These formats are designed to lock users into a particular video or audio player and those programs seldom come in a Linux version. There are answers though to this problem and that's one of the reasons why I like the Linux Mint distribution. It makes listening to proprietary audio and viewing restricted video as easy as it's ever going to get on Linux.