Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Mozilla released the first workable alpha version of its new Fennec mobile browser last week, showcasing a new interface optimized for small-screen devices. Despite the slimmed-down look, however, Fennec makes use of the same Mozilla technologies under the hood that are well-known in Firefox. In my testing on my own handheld device, I found Fennec an enticing browser with a well-thought-out interface.

While listening to the Transforming Education Panel at the Microsoft ICT for Development Conference, I was struck by how much this conference is a direct result of the hype around One Laptop Per Child. If it wasn't for Nicholas Negroponte's vision for a whole new technology application, low-cost laptops for education, I doubt that Microsoft would be courting the development community so intensely or expanded its Unlimited Potential program. It sure would not have extended Windows XP's working lifespan.

When Ben Rousch joined Van Dam Iron Works close to a decade ago, it didn't take him long to move off a proprietary network operating system and start experimenting with a Linux server. He changed horses again, to a Windows server, but today Van Dam is back in the Linux fold -- lesson learned. Rousch, manger of information systems at the metals and structural steel fabricator in West Michigan, says that the company's IT network largely consisted of a Novell server and Windows 98 clients when he arrived back in 2000.

Earlier this week the ASUS Eee PC celebrated its first birthday (with a full birthday party and cake at LAPTOP Magazine). It was one year ago that the Taiwanese company began selling its first sub-notebook (which would form a new category known as netbooks). The little Eee PC 701 not only would spur on a whole Eee brand for the company and line of different sized Eee PCs, but it would push the competing notebook manufacturers into the netbook market as well.

Asus CEO Jerry Shen has denied claims that consumers are sending back more Linux netbooks than they're returning Windows-based models. Speaking in an interview with Laptop Magazine, Shen said return rates were the same for both operating systems. "I believe the Linux and Windows have similar return rates," he said, adding that the Linux option was particularly popular in Europe.

Making good on a promise it made at the very beginning, Google has today announced that the source code underpinning its Android platform for mobile devices is available for free to anyone who wants a crack at it. The code is being provided through the newly-announced Android Open Source Project, which will give the public at large the opportunity to make contributions to the platform's all-important core -- a first for a mobile operating system with true mass-market appeal. Theoretically, the move should position Android to benefit from a fairly democratic, speedy evolution, and it'll also give anyone with a few spare chips lying around the chance to build a smartphone of their own without shelling out a dime in licensing fees.

Last year we started a new campaign tradition — the Commoner Letter series. As I’ve said before, and will definitely say again, the campaign is about building support — rallying our community members around the importance of supporting Creative Commons and the openness our tools help enable. Over the next three months, five prominent members of the CC community will share with the world why they support CC. If you’re interested in CC and issues of openness and access, this list is for you.

In this installment of the classic Networking 101 series, Charlie Schluting walks us through the whys and wherefores of the OSPF, the popular and robust interior gateway protocol.

After the release of Linux 2.6.27, kernel developers are currently busily integrating patches for the next kernel version into the main development branch of Linux. This usually involves discarding some old code and adding new code though on balance, there are usually more new lines than old ones, making the kernel grow continually.

STUX 2.0, released last month, is a remarkable improvement from the 0.9.2 release I reviewed a couple years ago. While the look and feel of the Slackware-based distribution have stayed pretty much the same, STUX lacks the glaring technical problems that made it unusable on the previous occasion.

IBM is targeting midsize business customers that use Linux with a new "baby" mainframe that costs just a fraction of the amount charged for the high-end mainframe IBM released in February. The System z10 Business Class (z10 BC), announced Tuesday and generally available now, follows in the tradition of IBM refreshing its primary mainframe product and then following up several months later with a stripped-down, cheaper version, says Forrester analyst Brad Day. But the so-called “baby mainframe” is a pretty strong machine on its own, and lets IBM compete more aggressively against various RISC and Itanium-based servers as well as high-end x86 and x64 machines, Day says.

Hadoop is a distributed computing platform that provides a framework for storing and processing petabytes of data. Because it is Java-based, Hadoop runs on Linux, Windows, Solaris, BSD, and Mac OS X. Hadoop is widely used in organizations that demand a scalable, economical (read commodity hardware), efficent, and reliable platform for processing vast amounts of data.

A computer simulation mostly used for social networking can be a useful tool for educators. Second Life, the virtual world in which participants create alter egos that explore and interact with one another, can be a useful venue for discussions, classes, conferences and projects, said Betsy Hughes, electronic resources librarian for the Kentucky Virtual Library.

The Linux Foundation has included an application-checker tool in the public beta version of the Linux Standard Base 4.0. The software is designed to reduce development costs by ensuring applications can run on any Linux Standard Base (LSB) certified distribution, according to the foundation. "This LSB 4.0 release is aimed at the practical needs of developers, both those looking for a standard platform and those who just want some practical advice on portability," said Jeff Licquia, senior engineer and technical lead for LSB 4.0 at the Linux Foundation, in a statement.

In my last article, I discussed, in quite some detail, the process that GCC uses to convert a C source file into an executable program file. These steps included preprocessing the source to remove comments, include other files as required, and string substitution. The resulting file was then compiled into assembly language. The assembly language output was then used to create an object file containing machine language, which was then linked with other standardized libraries to create an executable.

Hip hop artists might not be the most obvious target for Linux evangelists, but a little-known distribution called Transmission is making waves. It's what powers Indamixx, a pro audio production system that runs on a customised Samsung handheld computer created by Trinity Audio Group. Developed by 64 Studio Ltd. on a mixed Debian/Ubuntu base, Transmission and its bundled applications are a quintessential open source story.

With the Symbian Foundation throwing its weight behind the Eclipse Public License (EPL), the cache of that license has grown a great deal. But what prompted the foundation to go with the EPL. Was it just a total aversion to the GNU General Public License (GPL)? Well, David Rivas, vice president, S60 Software, Product and Technology Management, Devices at Nokia, which is the charter member of the Symbian Foundation, will not say that, exactly.

As promised, search engine giant Google has released the source code for its Android platform -- the open source technology that Google hopes will be adopted by mobile application developers, phone makers and carriers alike. The move comes just a day before the first Android-powered smartphone -- the G1 -- is set to hit U.S. stores.

Google's Android Market is seeing some changes in the final hours before the phone's debut. Many of the apps that had been added to the storefront disappeared this week, and a handful of big-name offerings popped up in their places. Imeem, Shazam and MySpace are among the services with applications now available. The first Android-powered phone, T-Mobile's G1, is set to launch Wednesday.

Today is Microsoft’s self-declared Global Anti-Piracy Day. No surprise then that the local arm of the Business Software Alliance has been ringing up journalists over the past couple of days with the ominous news that South Africa is losing between R2.8 billion to software pirates every year.