Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Sun Microsystems is setting out to create an open source, royalty-free video codec. Given the considerable head start of well-known, royalty-free video codecs like Dirac and Theora, you might ask why the world needs another. The answer, according to Sun, is the process the company will use to develop it -- starting with a full-on, careful examination of the patent situation. I spoke with Gerard Fernando and Rob Glidden about the project, which was unveiled in April. Fernando is a senior staff engineer at Sun, and Glidden is the company's global alliance manager for TV and media.

One of the nation's largest electronic voting systems has a software flaw that can cause it to drop ballots, its manufacturer has revealed. Premier Election Solutions -- a subsidiary of Diebold -- says its machines that operate in 34 states are affected by the glitch. The problem, it is believed, has been present in the program for the past decade.

Organizations have many ways to connect, collaborate, and keep in touch with co-workers, team members, and colleagues -- which can lead to multiple logins and user accounts, services spread across the Web, or services that are simply not accessible to all team members on various types of devices. Kablink (formerly ICECore) recognizes that centralization and accessibility are major components to successful project collaboration, and its latest offering is worth a project leader's second look.

Linux kernel maintainer Andrew Morton is fond of saying, "If you want the kernel team to do something, make us look bad." Perhaps somewhat in that spirit, a blog called "Linux Photography" has carefully outlined where Linux falls short today as a world-class environment for serious, production-oriented professional photographers.

Ulteo Application System is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Kubuntu and designed to work with the Ulteo Online Desktop service to provide you with an automatic offsite backup and file synchronization between live CD instances. It attempts to require as little user configuration and maintenance as possible, and provides several unique features that set it apart from being "just another distribution." On my test machine, a Sempron 2800 with 512MB of memory, Ulteo took almost three minutes to boot from the live CD -- quite a bit longer than most live CDs take on this system. Ulteo made up for this, however, when copying files during the installation -- that took a mere five minutes. There was little user intervention required during the installation besides selection of a username and password and my location, although I chose to partition my disk manually instead of allowing the installer to do it.

The Software Freedom Law Center, which provides legal help to the free and open-source software community, has released a detailed document that describes how users and vendors can ensure they are in compliance with the open-source GNU General Public License (GPL). Initially, GPL compliance was enforced through informal means, such as bulletin board discussions, but as Linux's profile grew in ensuing years, enforcement efforts became more organised and ultimately entered the courts, the report notes. Last year, Skype was found guilty of violating the GPL by a Munich, Germany regional court.

Developers of Android, the Linux mobile platform spearheaded by Google Inc., are asking security experts for input. The latest software development kit for Android was released earlier this week and plans are for the 1.0 version of the operating system to be shipped on mobile phones later this year. Security is a priority. "As you may expect, building and maintaining a secure mobile platform is a difficult task," wrote the Android Security Team.

Internet monitoring company, Pingdom, has plotted the popularity of the various Linux distributions by geography on the basis of how often their names are used in Google searches. Rigorous it may not be, but this 'distribution of distributions' is certainly fascinating.

Remember the good old days? Like back in 1999 when you could, as a friend of mine put it,"make a hundred thousand dollars a year for being able to spell Java." Those were the days, back when programmers driving Porsches had become a cliché. Now, more than a decade after the dot-com boom began, tech people once again find themselves earning less money despite bringing significantly more value to their employers.

Piracy notwithstanding, there are some good, valid reasons for making a backup of a DVD. K9Copy, a utility for copying DVDs, receives high marks in many forums, so I took it for a spin -- and found out its reputation is deserved. When I travel, I like to view movies on my laptop, but I'm not too keen on taking the original DVDs along; I prefer downloading them to the hard disk and keeping the originals at home. Also, if you have small kids, you know that DVDs probably won't be treated well, so making a backup copy makes good sense. Note, however, that laws differ in each country, and even such fair use might be prohibited where you live.

What are we doing to expose new users to Linux and Open Source solutions? My wife, after coming back from a visit to our local electronics store asked me why there were no “boxes” of Linux on the shelves, or PCs supporting the OS on display? Once upon a time, Red Hat did sell its software in a shrink wrapped box and you could find it on the shelf next to Windows98. But that was then and this is now.

After my last, rather lengthy, article about useful graphical tools , I am going to talk about another aspect of the Linux graphical user interface that I also find rather useful: Virtual Desktops. Thankfully, this should be a much shorter article!

Today we'll learn how to monitor, maintain, and make changes in our RAID 10 array. We'll make it bigger, smaller, safely test failure recovery, and set up monitoring and failure notifications.

SCO Group has been ordered to pay a 10,000 euros (US$14,871) fine in Germany for making claims that Linux includes intellectual property from Unix. SCO has repeatedly claimed that Linux is an unlawful derivative of Unix, but had agreed not to make this claim anymore in Germany, following a lawsuit in 2003. The current case found that the claims were still present in U.S. material available on the site of SCO Group GmbH, the group's German subsidiary. As well as paying the fine, SCO will have to monitor its German presence.

Developers of Android, the Linux mobile platform spearheaded by Google Inc., are asking security experts for input. The latest software development kit for Android was released earlier this week and plans are for the 1.0 version of the operating system to be shipped on mobile phones later this year. Security is a priority. "As you may expect, building and maintaining a secure mobile platform is a difficult task," wrote the Android Security Team.

What's the big deal about Linux? Isn't it at heart just a PC-based version of UNIX – the ‘70’s hit operating system which has outlived the predictions of its demise throughout the ‘90’s? If you’ve come from a Solaris or HP/UX or AIX background isn’t a PC-based UNIX a bit, well, passé?

Last week, we reviewed the Aspire One, Acer's entry into the netbook market. The small but powerful device comes preloaded with either Linux or Windows XP, and we reviewed the Linux version. Even though most people will never need to go beyond the default Linpus Linux offering on the One, more advanced users will quickly hit the wall Acer set up: it has more or less completely locked down the Xfce 4.2.2 installation on the One. This bothered me - this is a powerful machine, so I want a powerful operating system. I went for Ubuntu 8.04.1 - read on for a few thoughts on how well GNOME's user interface fares on a small-screen device such as the One.

Thanks to a "we don't sell small quantities" approach at OLPC , the government of Chile was rejected when they wanted to buy 900 test XOs. Bad mistake, OLPC! You don't reject customers like that. It is a psychological mistake.

Back in the mid-90s, when Linux was still at 1.something, website design was a simple exercise that left matters such as font choice up to the user. It was blessedly free of the Tyranny of Typography, the Legacies of Layout, and other controlling influences from the Provinces of Print. Better yet, it was free by design from withering rebuke by aesthetes whose high-minded "taste" made life miserable for both writers and readers. Back then the Web was meant to be maximally usable and minimally controlled by Authorities who knew more about what you need than you do. That was the Idea, and it stuck. For about two years.

openSUSE 11.0 is based on the Linux kernel version 2.6.25 and provides a cornucopia of features. If you choose to download the full DVD, you can expect a whopping 4.5 GBs for the iso-format file. Other options include a Live CD and over the network. The good news is that you can use a BitTorrent client to get the iso file.