Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

With 1.4 billion people connected, the Internet is the greatest collaborative network that mankind has experienced. One of the consequences of the growth of this network is a shift in the way knowledge is being created and distributed. As we move to an interconnected world, the balance of power is shifting from old, proprietary models of knowledge creation to the open source model that emphasizes collaboration and sharing. From management gurus to consulting firms to leading business schools, everyone is taking note of this new phenomenon that goes by various names like ‘Collaborative Innovation,’ ‘Open Innovation,’ or ‘Distributed Co-creation.’

Linux Firefox users can say a eulogy for EULA (End User License Agreement). After much pressure, Mozilla is removing the EULA from the Firefox welcome screen on Linux distributions, according to a recent Mozilla blog by Harvey Anderson, VP and general counsel of Mozilla.

As a Linux evangelist, I find myself in an interesting quandary. There are many new netbooks being sold with Linux pre-installed, but often the way Linux is installed is not what I’m used to seeing. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I understand the reasoning for custom interfaces, but it has some disadvantages. Love it or hate it, as a Linux community we have to be able to handle these things gracefully, or we lose all the potential impact we gain with pre-installed Linux.

Because a large portion of end user machines attached to the Internet are Windows machines, Web developers have no choice but to develop Web applications that, while they don't necessarily rely on Microsoft technology, do have to work properly with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. That usually means developers require a Windows installation at their disposal. Those of us who run Linux on our home machines have a harder time testing sites for Internet Explorer compatibility, or accessing sites that require proprietary IE features. IEs4Linux is a script that can help you set up three older versions of IE on any system running Wine. Unfortunately, the program is not as polished as it should be.

Funambol, the open source mobile device synchronization and push email provider, released version 7.0 of its server and client software in August. We took a look at what it offers, then took it for a test drive on mobile devices and the Linux desktop. At the heart of Funambol's synchronization abilities is a SyncML server running on top of Apache Tomcat. The company provides source code to a community edition of this server, and sells a carrier edition to commercial clients that adds on functions like remote device configuration and management.

Juliet Kemp shows how you don't need a dedicated computing cluster to perform big processing jobs- you can turn your LAN into a part-time cluster with Condor, which intelligently uses idle CPU cycles for powerful parallel processing.

Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU Project, speaks at great lengths about preserving the ideological purity of free software, and in his vision of the future, computer software development is modeled after mathematics and science research, where all research and development is open.

Ahead of celebrating global Software Freedom Day on Saturday, several of the country's open source user interest groups have been busy jointly hosting a number of related events this week. The string of events kicked off with a student focus yesterday--the first of two such events was held at the NTU (Nanyang Technological University) campus, with another slated for Friday at the NUS (National University of Singapore).

The "Trasnoche de Traducción Aymará" started at 6 pm, Bolivia time (+/- EST), of Friday, September 12. Much fun was had as the evening went on by about a dozen volunteers, mostly from the Linux community who were quite interested in the Sugar interface and the XOs but, alas, mostly were not Aymara savvy. However, our 3 "Aymaristas" got agreement on 58 strings, so we have just about 2.500 to go. The first string translated was "Name:", as when a kid names the XO. That will be "Suti:" for us...

If you develop applications using FOSS tools, Workbench is an ideal distro for you. In addition to packing a gamut of development tools, the distro also bundles everyday apps and eye candy, so you can use it on your desktop as well. Workbench is based on Xubuntu, the Xfce-powered Ubuntu flavor, but unlike Xubuntu it doesn't fit on a standard 700MB CD. With all its development tools and productivity apps, Workbench weighs in at 1.4GB. You can download the distro from either a low-speed direct download server or BitTorrent.

Again inspired by Phil Howard's [1.], whose penchant for seeing simple text files as the solution, I have found, indeed, it would have provided the quicker, less error prone approach for updating the News page on the defunct OpenSourceToday site. Moreover, not only would have it been, it is simpler; it also had the additional advantage of the ability to discard older, rotted stories before they become an obvious embarrassment. That is what I will show here, the more direct method to update these pages relying more heavily upon text files, while reducing the risk due to excessive processing.

After years of development, Google's first Android-powered phone is finally here -- well, almost. T-Mobile is expected to unveil the HTC Dream at a closed media event Sept. 23, with the device rumored to hit store shelves by mid-October. The question, then, is whether the Dream -- and the Android concept on the whole -- can actually deliver.

For an entertaining example of how Linux can power home appliances, check out the Tangent Quattro Internet radio. This device combines Internet and broadcast radio with a media server client on an embedded Linux platform to give you a variety of audio playback options. The Quattro has a solid feel. A single speaker at the top of the unit produces rich sound. The front panel has volume and tuning knobs and a dozen buttons for station presets and other functions. At the center of the front panel is a two-line LCD display that shows the station you're listening to, menu choices, and status messages.

Our replay of Charlie Schluting's excellent Networking 101 series continues with a two-part dissection of TCP. Understanding the ubiquitous TCP is key to troubleshooting networking communications.

Supercomputer maker has introduced the CX1, a small and low-cost supercomputer running Microsoft's new HPC Server 2008. The system is scheduled for official release Sept. 22. Aimed at users across a range of markets, including financial services, aerospace, automotive, petroleum, life sciences, government, academia and digital media, the systems are priced from $25,000 to more than $60,000.

VMware Inc. Chief Technology Officer Stephen Herrod drew a cheer at the VMworld conference Wednesday by announcing plans to bring the next version of the company's VirtualCenter management software to Linux and the iPhone. In a speech opening Day 2 of the VMworld show in Las Vegas, Herrod also described improvements to VMware's core virtual machine technology that should allow businesses to run larger, more demanding applications on virtualized servers.

Carla Schroder says she just "kind of wandered into" her current life as a free software advocate and well-known IT journalist. "I don't have much in the way of formal education. But I've always been mechanically inclined - your classic ripping things apart and figuring out how they work. I think that makes open source a natural fit for me."

shd-tcp-tools provides a collection of tools for port forwarding, load balancing, and rate-limiting TCP connections. They can be useful if you want to offer SSH services but also limit how much of your bandwidth each user can consume, so that a single long-running SCP operation cannot starve the link from your server to the Internet.

We’re still working on this. There’s been a bunch of helpful feedback. We appreciate this. We think we’ve integrated the feedback into something that’s a good solution; different from out last version in both its essence and its presentation and content.

The Shuttleworth Foundation’s open philanthropy fellow, Mark Surman, will be moving to the Mozilla Foundation where he has been appointed executive director and will continue his work in open sourcing philanthropy.