Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Ubuntu is well known in user circles as the cool kids' Linux. It's available preinstalled on PCs and laptops from Dell Inc. and from numerous smaller computer vendors. What Ubuntu hasn't been known as is a Linux distribution that matters to CIOs and IT managers. Things are changing. Canonical Ltd., Ubuntu's parent company, is finally taking serious action on its long-announced plans to become a serious enterprise Linux player. The Isle of Man-based Linux distributor isn't just targeting data center servers, although that's on its list.

Buckling under the weight of the Internet radio royalty hike that SoundExchange pushed through last July, Pandora may pull its own plug soon. Despite being one of the most popular Internet radio services, the company still isn't making money, and its founder, Tim Westergren, says it can't last beyond its first payment of the higher royalties.

The explosion of low-cost, ultra-portable laptops that started to appear in computer stores is a dream come true for many technology enthusiasts and free software developers who are keen to offer solutions for the new computer class. In this week's issue we take a first look at Mandriva Flash 2008.1, one of the first distributions with official support for the ASUS Eee PC. Does it really work "out of the box" as claimed? Read on to find out. In the news section, Slackware introduces KDE 4.1 into the development tree, Fedora hints at a major problem with its update infrastructure, and Linux Mint suffers from a crippling attack on its web site. Also in this week's issue, links to two excellent interviews with Ubuntu's Scott Remnant and gOS's David Liu. Finally, after a short break, we have resumed adding new distributions to the DistroWatch database - one of the new ones introduced last week is FaunOS, an interesting Arch Linux-based desktop distribution optimised for USB Flash drives.

Three students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were ordered by a federal court judge to cancel their scheduled presentation at DEFCON about vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system, violating their First Amendment right to discuss their important research. EFF represents Zack Anderson, RJ Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa. The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) sued the students and MIT in United States District Court in Massachusetts, claiming that the students violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by delivering information to conference attendees that could be used to defraud the MBTA of transit fares.

NimbleX, a Slackware-based distribution, advertises itself as "the new wave of Linux." However, what is appealing in NimbleX -- its speed and small footprint and the resulting selection of alternative software choices -- will likely strike veteran GNU/Linux users as being very old school. By contrast, its limitations -- too little attention to such aspects as the installer, packaging, and security -- seem all too modern, being reminiscent of other distros intent on commercialization or emulating Windows, even though NimbleX is a community distribution and largely a labor of love for Romanian developer Bogdan Radulescu.

Microsoft's Open XML format overcame its final stumbling block and is moving forward as an official ISO standard. The file format had been held back earlier this year by claims that the voting process was rushed and that Microsoft's specification information was incomplete.

“Hacking Exposed Linux” by ISECOM (Institute for Security and Open Methodologies) is a guide to help you secure your Linux environment. This book does not only help improve your security it looks at why you should. It does this by showing examples of real attacks and rates the importance of protecting yourself from being a victim of each type of attack.

Wikis are sprouting up everywhere, so it's not surprising that the world of investing, finance, business and money management is getting in on the act. If you're looking for stock tips, industry analysis, information about how to start a home business, or advice about paying off credit card debt, you might turn to one of these money-related wikis to benefit from the wisdom of the digital crowd.

This series began with the idea of showing a form that could be used by an external user(s) as a means of adding content to a remote site. The idea of the use of a password form was there from the onset. It made sense to limit access to a select set of users. The password form enhances security, which became an issue with the data input form. Nonetheless, until very recently, I intended to skip any real discussion of password forms. I was going to cite a book's discussion. At most, I might have mentioned a few potential problems. I was certain that would have sufficed. I changed my mind when I saw the ease simple minded SQL injection breached this barrier. Therefore, more than a few words are warranted.

Gmail, Google's popular Web mail application, is already full of useful features all on its own. But Firefox users can further customize Gmail with a variety of add-ons. Some only change the appearance, while others add functionality that makes Gmail more like a personal planner than just a plain old email application. Let's take a look at three Firefox add-ons for Gmail.

Open source software has long been accepted as a legitimate software license by tech-savvy crowds. It's become recognised by business. And even the courts are taking seriously open source software authors rights despite the fact no money has changed hands. This month an Artistic License was tested in court in the case of Robert Jacobsen vs KAM Industries, and upheld as enforceable copyright conditions. It was a landmark decision ratifying the philosophical basis behind FOSS.

A guide to the kernel development process aims to encourage participation by new programmers by explaining what is involved. Some developers and businesses attempting to submit changes to the Linux kernel find themselves tangled up with the processes used, according to the guide, which was written by Jonathan Corbet, executive editor of lwn.net and himself a Linux developer.

Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!

SCO keeps changing its story of "infringement", and so over the years, we've tried to track all the twists and turns, comparing their allegations with evidence available on the Internet or in our collections. SCO made it harder when it removed its collection of press releases from its site and from the Internet Archive. I had forgotten all about it, but years ago, before they did that, I had saved their list of older press releases, meaning for us to eventually look at all of them. Then, they disappeared, and I just stumbled across the information again now, and I'd like to share it with you. Even the names of the press releases could be useful. If anyone gets sued at any point, at least they'll know what to ask for in discovery.

A couple of innocuous words that have insidious consequences. A simple marketing tagline, yet it appears to be seriously undermining a vast segment of the computer sector. What is it? The phrase, "industry standard." It comes from the same warped (but ingenious) minds that coined the term "legacy" back in the 1990s. That harmless word served to forward the Windows NT - Intel processor gravy train at the expense of so-called inferior technologies like mainframe, OpenVMS and even Unix. Yet many would argue that despite all the genuine improvement to Windows in recent years to make it much more enterprise friendly, it still can't hold a candle to many of these legacy systems.

Free software advocates are praising a federal appeals ruling that allows greater protection for open source software against copyright infringement. The case concerns a company, Kam Industries, which downloaded open source code for use in a product that programs the chips that control model trains. The code used was written by Robert Jacobsen, who released it under an Artistic License, which requires other people who use it to give credit to the author, identify the original source of the files and describe how the new code has been changed, among other conditions.

Most often, Microsoft Corp.'s biggest rivals in the Chinese market have been black-market versions of its own products. That could change for the company's Office software suite, a key product that includes its word processing and spreadsheet tools. Wuxi, China-based Evermore Software is expected to release its latest Office competitor in late August. And while EIOffice 2009 is based on a file format standard promoted by the Chinese government and costs a fraction of Microsoft's offering, it also comes with a new legal threat.

Ten years ago, the then CEO of Ericsson in Sweden wrote an internal article about digital convergence. He stated that within a very short time, all data produced in an analog way such as books, music, photographs, newspapers and so forth would cease to exist. Instead all content would become digital and we would render, view and listen to digital formats. I believe he had a vision for the future, but his timing was off about eight to ten years.

LXer Feature: 17-Aug-2008

This week we have Akademy 2008 reviews, Windows gives a BSOD during the Olympics opening ceremonies, Linus doesn't like monkeys, Derek Knowlton journeys to Sin City to experience DefCon 16, Lawyers who should stay away from Linux and 10 of this, 5 of those, 11% of that..its numbers numbers everywhere!

In the nextPeople Behind KDE interview, we stay in the United States of America (but leave in an underwater craft!) to meet a KDE developer who could be a JuKebox in another life, someone who helps you build development versions of KDE (staying on the bleeding edge without the pain!) - tonight's star of People Behind KDE is Michael Pyne.