Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Last week we introduced ourselves to Sidux, the excellent Debian Sid implementation that makes Debian Sid a bit friendlier. Even though I thought I gave a number of reasons why a user might prefer Sidux to Debian Sid, or Ubuntu, or some other Debian derivative, they apparently were not clear to a number of readers.

An independent Yahoo Inc is better for business, Google Inc Chief Executive told reporters on Thursday, saying a combination with Microsoft Corp would be anti-competitive. "The world is better off with an independent Yahoo," Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporters. There's "more competition ... in search, and more competition in the other advertising markets where Yahoo is a leader."

Researchers plan to create a library of human genetics, with entries on the workings of individual genes, and make it available for anyone in Wikipedia rather than in an obscure academic format. Authors of the"gene wiki" say they have created 7,500 Wikipedia entries on different genes and are editing another 650 already existing entries.

The rm command can be a powerful tool for deleting data -- until you delete the wrong files or directories. Thankfully, the ext3undel utility can recover accidently removed data on ext3 filesystems. Users can recover a specific file by name, or they can restore all files marked as deleted (though the filenames won't be recovers, so they will have to look at the contents of the files to identify them).

Who knew that the biggest desktop Linux show of 2008 would turn out to be the June Computex show in Taipei, Taiwan, where the next generation of Linux desktop hardware was put on display? In fact, Linux was at the heart of no fewer than four different ultra mobile PCs (UMPC). At the show, Intel introduced the next two members of its Diamondville Atom processor family. The first to arrive was the N270, which is meant for what Intel calls Netbooks and the rest of the world calls UMPC. The other Diamondville processor, the N230, is meant for mobile Internet devices (MID). Both chips are meant for lightweight (under four pounds) portable computers with battery lives of three hours and up.

GNetWatch is a network monitoring and performance testing tool that lets you can see the status of hosts on your network, send ping requests of varying size and quality of service to hosts, and investigate SNMP information. GNetWatch includes support for using Wireshark and nmap to snoop packets and investigate hosts on the network.

Until today I've largely been a big supporter of Microsoft's efforts to acquire Yahoo. A couple of days before Microsoft placed its initial $44.6 billion bid for the company, I told Fox Business Channel that a Microsoft merger had to happen to save Yahoo (and I certainly wasn't the first to say this, I just had magnificent timing). Throughout the ups and downs and stupendous drama of the negotiations, I held firm that a deal was in the best interests of both companies. Not because I'm a huge Microsoft fan, but because the health of the Internet requires a competitive search market. Google controls too much market share and too much related search revenue. A counterbalancing force is needed to keep the system healthy. And Microsoft or Yahoo standing alone cannot counter Google.

For most of us, the Web is primarily a visual medium. The downside is that accessing the benefits of the Internet can be a challenge for the visually-impaired. Fortunately, electronic documents are much more versatile than printed ones. Screen-reading software has come a long way, and today it can make online information accessible even to the completely blind.

It's arguably the prettiest alternative to Microsoft Office, with a clean interface in a soothing IBM blue. Oddly, the once-biggest name in computing christened it"Lotus Symphony," after a spectacular and expensive failure that dates back to the days of DOS. But this new IBM Lotus Symphony seems poised for success.

Can we save what we don't understand? That's the challenge for those who wish to save the Net — both from those that don't understand it, and froin those that understand it too well, in wrong or inadequate ways. I've written here before about this challenge. The first piece was called Saving the Net , and ran in June, 2003. The second had the same title, adding How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes. That ran in November, 2005. The Net isn't flushed yet, but it's circling the drain.

Consumers who want to try Ubuntu Linux but are intimidated by the idea of downloading and installing it themselves now have a less stressful option. They can walk into their local Best Buy store and pick up a boxed version with support for $19.99. Since the first Ubuntu Linux operating system was released in October 2004, the software has been free to download and use. But that wasn't always an option for users with slow Internet connections or those who lacked adequate technical experience to download and install a new operating system.

Just a few years ago, getting complex legal assistance from a lawyer you never met in person would have been unthinkable. Today, however, many people carry on relationships online; why not conduct business with your lawyer online as well? One Italian firm already works this way, using open source software as much as it can. The lawyers at Solignani in Vignola, just a few miles from the home of Ferrari in Maranello, never see many of their clients after one initial meeting. All communication takes place by phone, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Internet telephony, or email.

The OpenSUSE Project has launched an automated build system aimed at helping developers build and package their applications. The "OpenSUSE Build Service" can package source code for several popular distributions, and cross-compile it for a variety of embedded architectures, according to the Project.

This week, system administrators across the globe are rushing to fix an Internet-wide security flaw. The issue, discovered in the domain name system, would allow a hacker to gain access to domain name records and redirect traffic to an alternate location. That'd mean trying to access something like your bank's Web site could take you instead to a malicious page designed to steal your information.

In my last post, I wrote about why we need an easy way to create compelling courses for the XO in order to scale constructionism to the national level here in Nepal. In this article, I will talk about what I think those courses should look like and how they should function.

Recently the makers of the free-as-in-cost iPhone jailbreaking utility PwnageTool discovered that someone was reselling their creation -- without permission, under a new name, and for profit. That's a situation no software developer wants to be in, but the PwnageTool team was in an even tougher position because of the license under which it released its code. It didn't have one. What the reseller did is flat-out illegal, of course; PwnageTool is protected by its creators' copyright, period. No one who downloads it has any right to modify or redistribute it without permission.

Terra Soft, the developer of Yellow Dog Linux on the PowerStation platform, is pushing the limits of design and performance with the planned mid-July release of a quad core PowerPC deskside tower that returns the Power Architecture to both the workstation and server markets at a competitive price.

Almost two weeks after leaking details about its new line of Ming PDA phones, Motorola made it official with a formal launch. Shipping now in China, the line includes a Linux-based Ming A1600 model offering GPS, handwriting recognition, and a 3.2-megapixel camera with business card reader.

What could be cooler than the brand spanking new 3G Apple iPhone? How about adding your own content to it? Here’s how to begin writing your very own programs for the Jesus phone, replete with flashy effects and pictures. All you need is a Mac and an iPhone. Heck, you don’t even need the iPhone - here’s how to get an iPhone emulator too!

Google has made a habit of throwing its considerable weight behind a project and making it succeed. The company's Android project, its effort at creating a Linux-based smartphone, is running into delays, while a similar effort by the LiMo Foundation already has produced handsets. Making good software for mobile phones is hard -- even for a technically adept company like Google. Indeed, it's so difficult that the fleet-footed champion of search advertising finds itself in the unaccustomed position of playing catch-up to normally slow-moving industry behemoths.