Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

In response to the growing blogging ecosystem and Web phenomena like the Slashdot effect, the developers of the Habari blogging platform have built features into their core software to tackle the increased attention blogs receive, both from innocent viewers and exploitative attackers, while making it easier for users to manage and administer their blogs. Most blogging software start out with a simple WYSIWYG interface and store data in back end databases. Some applications evolve into more complex blogging engines with bolt-on accessories. Habari, by contrast, was written from the ground up to handle things like comment spam and traffic overloads.

A decade ago, European countries leapt out of the gate to take the lead in the radical open-source movement -- none more so than France -- and left U.S. developers in the proverbial dust. Through policies and high-profile projects, the French Republic for years has been advocating for all open source all the time, in government and education. And France is not stopping: This summer, an economic commission set up by French President Nicolas Sarkozy recommended tax benefits to stimulate even more open-source development.

Software developer Red Hat bought an Israeli company in a bid to gain a competitive edge against Microsoft and smaller rivals that provide computing services for complex networks. Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat said Thursday that it paid $107 million in cash for privately held Qumranet, which sells software that helps computer systems run multiple programs more efficiently on less equipment.

Content-filtering proxies restrict Internet access privileges for users or groups across an entire network. They must be able to block unwanted content through keyword, URL, DNS, MIME, and image filtering. They need to authenticate and log a user's Internet activity by monitoring and generating detailed reports of URLs accessed, and they must integrate antivirus or malware protection by accessing a reliable antivirus server. Fulfilling all these functions may be a lot to ask, but SafeSquid delivers on all counts.

SCO is offering full-day training on Porting and Packaging on SCO OpenServer 6 and UnixWare 7.1.4 Workshop. A hands-on workshop walking through porting of open source applications and packaging.

[They want me to pay $500 bucks to learn how to port open source to their stuff? They've got some moxy that's for sure. - Scott]

A top Debian contributor has been left "pretty disappointed" by elements of the Debian community for failing to comply with the conditions of the GNU GPLv2 license. Daniel Baumann, who maintains the Debian Syslinux bootloader package, has said Debian components were being released only in binary form without source code - resulting in problems for Apple Macintosh users.

Standards like POSIX are meant to make life easier for application developers by providing rules on the semantics of system calls for multiple different platforms. Sometimes, though, operating system developers decide to change the behavior of their platform—with full knowledge that it breaks compatibility—for various reasons. This requires application developers to notice the change and take appropriate action; not doing so can lead to a security hole like the one found in the Postfix mail transfer agent (MTA) recently.

The release of Google's Chrome browser is a welcome development for those who belong to the ABM category - the Anyone But Microsoft group. They don't mind a monopoly, they just don't like the Microsoft monopoly. The prospect of having Google dictate the course of their digital lives is apparently pleasing to these folk, who see the company as some kind of cuddly teddy bear - a big bear, sure, one that embraces you, fine - but, hey, it's a warm, soft embrace so who cares?

An issue near and dear to my heart, both personally and professionally is that of spam. Not the lunch meat, which, when prepared correctly, I happen to enjoy, but that bane of email, the unsolicited commercial email (UCE). At what point does legitimate communication cross the line to become junk. I am asking this question for a couple of reasons. The first is an article in this morning's Washingtong Post about Facebook users having their account's deactivated for abuse, because the user was using the system for, theoretically, just what its designers intended - staying in contact with friends. The second reason is more critical to me and that is sending out updates about hazardous weather and preparations to members of my volunteer cadre. As TS Hanna approaches, the traffic will increase and many of the systems that some of my people are on consider this uptick in mail to be spam, regardless of whether or not the end user actually chooses to receive it.

Never let it be said that I don't listen to readers. In April, after I favorably reviewed a wireless product that elegantly displayed baseball scores, Don wrote:"How could you recommend that, especially at the price of $200 for a unitasker? This isn't worth $20 for what it does. What a joke. Please check out Chumby for a slightly cheaper and much more functional alternative."

If the rocky reception of KDE 4 has done anything, it has forced the KDE project to realize it needs to listen to users more closely. One of the first results of this realization is the new Community Working Group (CWG). Announced at Akademy, the recently concluded annual KDE conference, the CWG was described as designed "to act as a central point of contact by being available to communicate user needs and concerns to developers, and developer intentions and plans to users." The CWG is still being organized; to find out more about its plans, we contacted Anne Wilson and Juan Carlos Torres, two of the group's five initial members.

Wrapping up the OSCON (Open Source Convention) held in Portland, Oregon on July 21-25, show organizer O'Reilly Media has posted photos, videos, and presentations files. Meanwhile, winners of the 2008 Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards and the SourceForge.net 2008 Community Choice Awards have also been announced.

Google's Chrome web browser is upon us, with performance already hitting legendary status. Yet, it is presently available only for use on Microsoft Windows systems? What then for us, the Linux user? Here's how to begin poking around and see what the future looks like.

I've been thinking about something for a few days now. It's about the latest Novell-Microsoft deal that was announced on August 20, where Microsoft agreed to buy another $100 million worth of vouchers from Novell. I was wondering: how come two public companies can make a deal that seems to me to be material and yet keep pieces of the deal secret?

Sun Microsystems Inc. has released a new version of xVM VirtualBox, its platform for desktop virtualization, and is also starting to offer enterprise support for the platform, the company said on Thursday. Version 2.0 comes with improved performance and platform support, adding support for 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Sun has also developed a new user interface for the Mac platform. Mac users will also get better networking performance, as will users who are running Sun's Solaris OS. It has also improved overall performance on AMD-based systems.

HP announced a slew of new products on Wednesday designed to make the deployment of a virtualized solution a greater value for businesses. HP's virtualization push focuses on getting rid of the impediments that reduce a virtual deployment's positive effect on a business.

Out of the many available open source document management packages, Epiware GPL is noteworthy because it includes project management features: if your work has to do with producing written matter, you can not only manage the documents themselves, but the development project as well. Epiware is a Web-based application, so clients need just a Web browser to use it; check out the online demo if you want to get a taste of it. There are (or will be) three versions: Epiware GPL, which we will examine; Epiware Professional Free, a simpler version that allows you to handle a single project; and Epiware Professional Desktop ("coming soon"). Epiware GPL is available under the GPL version 2. Its latest release is 4.8.6, dated May 2008.

For some time I have been using the American Power Conversion (APC) uninterruptible power supply (UPS) daemon Apcupsd to interface my desktop computer with my APC Back-UPS ES 550. Available for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and Solaris 10, Apcupsd reliably warns me when the power goes out and gives me time to get my box properly shut down before data is lost, or does so automatically if I am not there to supervise.

No longer will the Free Software Foundation be the target of advertisements for novelty condoms, Ibiza package holidays and extreme sports gear. It's leaving the 16-24 yoof demographic behind. Today the GNU project celebrates its quarter-century. It was on 27 September 1983 that MIT slacker Richard M Stallman made his announcement that he intended to create a complete Unix-like system that would be completely open and hackable, giving anyone the right to modify and distribute the work. The Free Software Foundation is getting its celebration in early.

HP announced a series of wide-ranging virtualization products, services and initiatives on Sept. 2. The drive indicates a global and long-term surge by HP on managing solutions for virtualization, but in the context of business outcomes and in a management framework that includes larger IT transformation strategies.