Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

From the 'it's not there yet' files: In my opinion, one of the greatest innovations of the Firefox 2 release was the inclusion of Tab Overflow. For the first time I could actually handle as many open browser tabs as I wanted. While Mozilla introduced Tab overflow in 2006, here we are in 2009 and Google Chrome doesn't have that feature. For someone like me that often keeps 10+ tabs open at any one time this is a (minor) problem.

Using the OORunner class that we developed last week we'll now create a Python class for converting spreadsheets into CSV files. The converter supports any type of input spreadsheet that is supported by OpenOffice.

The friendly British Bobby has just been given the right to remotely hack into the computers of UK citizens without notifying the owners, or bothering with a search warrant, or even passing an act of parliament for that matter. A few months back the Brit police proved themselves not to be too worried about the small matter of search warrants when it comes to computers, data and privacy when City of London detectives closed the investigation into BT and Phorm.

PC BIOS giant Phoenix Technologies today launched a fast-booting Linux add-on for Windows PCs. This hands-on review finds "HyperSpace" works to redress slow boot times, WiFi connection hassles, and short battery lives typical of Windows PCs, but sacrifices a lot of flexibility in order to achieve these goals.

The newly-released book "How to be a Geek Goddess" is supposed to be a helpful, not-condescending computing howto for women. Tina Gasperson, who blatantly admits to being of the female persuasion herself, isn't sure it meets these goals, and suffers from severely mixed feelings. Read Tina's review to find out if this is a must-read or a must-fling-against-the-wall.

Bloggers took a moment to contemplate the upcoming year and what it means for open source software and Linux in particular. There were some New Year's resolutions and a few holiday gifts still floating around in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day.

Freescale's new i.MX515 processor is built for netbooks -- low-cost Linux netbooks, specifically. Working with organizations like Pegatron, Freescale has drawn up a reference design for OEMs that ties in its processor, Ubuntu Linux and Adobe Flash Lite to create a netbook that could retail for as low as $200.

The U.S. economy is bleeding jobs, but -- at least, so far -- the high-tech industry is something of a safe haven. That's not to say there haven't been tech losses or that it's easy to find an IT job. However, people with the right skill sets and the savvy to sniff out the particular areas of demand are much better positioned than professionals in some of the more-beleaguered industries.

LXer Feature: 04-Jan-2009

Welcome to the first LXer Roundup of 2009, I hope your new year was a good one. ChannelWeb has a list of what they think are the 10 Coolest Open Source products of 2008 and Phoronix has their take on the great Linux innovations of 2008. Bruce Byfield gives us his list of the seven most influential Linux distributions. I like the list overall but I think it should include Damn Small Linux.

As always, KDE will have a presence at next year's FOSDEM in Belgium on 7-8 February 2008. This is earlier in the month than usual. We are looking for people to give talks in the KDE or cross-desktop devroom. FOSDEM is the European meeting of free software developers, with over 4000 visitors, 200 lectures and lots of stalls to visit over a 2 day period. You can come and listen to a plethora of interesting talks about anything related to free software, and meet the people behind the nicknames.

GRUB 2, the next-generation Linux boot loader, has received a new font engine. Version 2 of the GRand Unified Bootloader introduces this new font engine that's written in C and with a font tool in Java. This engine will allow for better internationalization support including non-ASCII character codes and support for multiple fonts.

The IEEE has again ranked companies in different sectors to estimate the power that these companies have based upon their patent portfolio. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft came top in the "Computer Software" category and IBM tops the "Computer Systems" chart.

The so-called free economy is alive and well, despite a general economy that's in the dumps. Rather than legal tender, what makes this economy survive and thrive is a combination of ego-stroking and token rewards. It seems to be working pretty well for ThisNext.com.

The open source blogosphere featured two articles the last week of December 2008 that inaccurately draw software-market history timelines from which the authors then inaccurately position the place of open source software in the information technology (IT) market. I doubt if the statements are intentionally misleading; they are most likely the result of ignorance or sloppiness.

Sylvania's G Netbook Meso offers a nice-looking screen and plenty of ports -- you get three USBs as well as a VGA. The keyboard is just too cramped for reviewer Jack Germain's liking, though that's a problem found on just about any tiny netbook computer. The available Ubuntu Netbook Remix OS will give you the option to effortless switch between two GUI styles.

The Wikimedia Foundation has raised the necessary funds to operate Wikipedia until the end of June, the nonprofit organisation announced Friday. Wikimedia has received about US$6.2 million since launching its fundraising campaign in early November. More than 125,000 donors have chipped in.

German Linux integrator Millenux is launching a series of monthly workshops for Linux developers and IT managers on open-source Linux topics including high availablity (HA), Debian, and kernel development. The initial January 7 event in Munich will address "mobile computing," plus NoMachine's "NX" Xhosting technology.

Google has been slowly, but surely, displacing Microsoft as the number one PC technology company. Google has done it by misdirection. Instead of taking Microsoft head-on in desktops, Google first consolidated their hold on Web search and only then started moving into Web-based desktop applications. Then, in 2008, they made their first direct strike at the desktop with the release of their own Web browser: Google Chrome. Now, Matthaus Krzykowski and Daniel Hartmann, founders of the stealth startup Mobile-facts, have found that you can take Google's smartphone operating system, Android, and use it as a desktop operating system.

Netbooks run either Windows or Linux, and both are readily available in shops all over the world. The Linux variants chosen by several netbook manufacturers are usually derived from desktop distributions, and obviously, Windows is a desktop operating system as well. However, netbooks have small displays, and both Windows and GNOME/KDE and some of their applications aren't always suited well for such an environment. Enter Android, Google's Linux-based phone operating system. It is suggested that Android-based netbooks will appear on the market in 2010, maybe even sooner.

One more new filing from Wednesday, this one from SCO v. Novell. Here's the docket entry:..