Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

A local AM Radio show that I have been a guest on several times interviewed Richard Stallman on their most recent show. Over 40 minutes of Mike Cady and the guys talking to Richard, good stuff. - Scott

Wireless management on Linux is a bit of a hodge-podge, especially for roaming users. NetworkManager, KWifiManager, and various other utilities that have come and gone all attempt to make managing different network connections easy. wicd (pronounced "wicked"), the wireless interface connection daemon, tries to do the job better, so we're going to give it a test drive.

The new generation of inexpensive netbooks may be wonderful, but for my main desktop I want a real machine -- something I can open up, clean, and add to. So I was extremely tickled recently to trade for a new LinPC, an economical personal computer that features PCLinuxOS MiniMe 2008 preinstalled and ready to go. The LinPC's motherboard is an MSI K9N6SGM-V V2 in a Micro-ATX form factor. An AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ dual-core processor powers the system, aided by a gigabyte of RAM. It has a 1GHz front side bus and supports up to 2GB of DDR2 533/667/800 RAM. Included is a Realtek RTL8201CL Ethernet chip and Realtek ALC888 7.1 High Definition Audio. It has the standard ports, including four USB ports and six-port audio. The Nvidia MCP61P GPU is equivalent to an Nvidia 6100. Expansion slots are one PCI Express x16, one PCI Express x1, and two PCI (all open upon delivery). There are two memory slots, with one open.

Wireless management on Linux is a bit of a hodge-podge, especially for roaming users. NetworkManager, KWifiManager, and various other utilities that have come and gone all attempt to make managing different network connections easy. wicd (pronounced "wicked"), the wireless interface connection daemon, tries to do the job better, so we're going to give it a test drive.

Chinese PC manufacturing giant Lenovo, which years ago purchased IBM's personal computer business, appears to have quietly stopped offering Linux as a pre-installation option. None of the company's 49 ThinkPad and IdeaPad notebook models -- nor its many ThinkCenter and IdeaCenter desktops -- can currently be ordered with Linux.

News Items that were on the OpenSourceToday site were mostly rewrites of official company [1.] press releases. These Items were by their nature were highly volatile (read as rapidly prone to rot), hence, were inappropriate for longer term retention. Moreover, whatever marginal gain they offered meant prompt display was a necessity. Therefore, rapid, dynamic updating of the News page was an inherently sensible. I describe here one way to meet those needs.

Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network's first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given country also passed through the United States. Engineers who help run the Internet said that it would have been impossible for the United States to maintain its hegemony over the long run because of the very nature of the Internet; it has no central point of control.

I've wanted to write this article for quite a while. Over the years I've noted thatJava-based music and sound applications have increased in number and quality, yet no comprehensive list or summaries have covered these advances. And so at long last I present this survey of music and sound applications that require Java. The presentation follows no particular order, but in this first part I'll begin by questioning the use of Java in sound and music applications development, followed by a brief look at Java's internal audio and MIDI capabilities.

Google's Chrome browser appears to be doing more damage to Firefox and Opera's market share, leaving Internet Explorer sitting pretty.

Download management is one of the larger categories on the Firefox Add-ons site, but while hundreds of extensions fall under this category, they are a mixed lot at best. Many have yet to release versions compatible with Firefox 3.0, and others are designed to work with Windows programs. However, with patience, you can find some programs worth exploring -- and even a few small treasures -- in this category.

Well it was a comparatively quiet week on the Linux blogs last week, due at least in part, no doubt, to the Labor Day holiday. Gustav could have been a factor too -- dampening, so to speak, those conversational fires -- but we here at LinuxInsider also have another small theory to explain some of the relative lack of discussion.

Thursday's news that Amazon will be running G1G1 v2 starting in late November certainly made quite a splash. I've seen north of 50 news-stories on news.google.com and within 24 hours we also had two major Austrian news-organisations inquire about the details at OLPC Austria.

As a .NET developer, you should avoid using the newly released Managed Extensibility Framework as its license prevents its use beyond the Windows platform. This will prevent your .NET software from running on Linux or MacOS in the future. Luckily, there is a cross platform solution available today that has no platform limitations: Mono.Addins, a technology inspired by Eclipse's own plugin system. We have tutorials, reference manuals, API docs, our FAQ our public groups and multiple large applications with source code available that you can learn from (MonoDevelop, Banshee, F-Spot and Gnome-Do).

NetSuite already supports Apple's Safari browser in addition to Internet Explorer and Firefox. Since Chrome uses the same HTML engine as Safari (WebKit), the major aspect that NetSuite might have needed to accommodate is Chrome's new V8 JavaScript engine.

LXer Feature: 07-Sept-2008

The big news this week was the release of 'Chrome' the new browser from Google. It is only available on the Windows platform as of right now. I tried it and it has some cool features, it has some things that need a lot of work too. Also Microsoft's new Vista ads start to show up on T.V., a self professed "Windows Guy" decides to takes Open SuSE 11 for a spin, some advice on mailing list etiquette and how to get the younger generation into Linux.

Microsoft, once an ardent proponent of proprietary software, is no longer fighting the growing army of open source developers worldwide and in the Philippines. In fact, it will soon open in the country its first interoperability lab in Asia. The software behemoth’s local subsidiary teamed up with the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) and the National Computer Center (NCC) for the establishment of the Microsoft Open Source Interoperability Lab, which will officially begin operations in September this year.

During Akademy 2008, we sat down with Fabrizio Montesi who's working on JOLIE integration in KDE (and Plasma in particular). He explained the mechanics of the technology and what it can do for KDE. Read on for the interview.

Trying to begin a career as a graphic designer and build a portfolio, Evan Stremke joined CrowdSpring, a Chicago-based online marketplace for creative services. No conventional help-wanted Web site, CrowdSpring is part of a trend sweeping the Web, sometimes called"crowdsourcing."

Paul Ferrill evaluates openSUSE 11.0, which shines on the desktop, for its fitness as a server capable of filling many different roles.

The Linux Foundation plans to hold an End User Collaboration Summit in New York City in October. The press release we received introducing the event said, "It's by invitation, but registration is free, in keeping with the idea of opening it to 'real' end users." Imagine my grief when I checked the "Press/Analyst" button next to the "What type of constituent group do you belong to?" question on the application form and learned that, by virtue of my occupation, I was not allowed to attend. According to a public relations representative, "The logic behind keeping the press out is to make sure that participants do not feel like opinions, ideas, or even dumb questions will be recorded for posterity." I repeatedly asked both Linux Foundation personnel and their PR firm what other occupations would not be allowed to enjoy the event. Would bloggers be blackballed, lest their presence make attendees self-conscious? What about people who work in law enforcement or for intelligence agencies? They never answered the question.