Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

At the Geek Ranch we recently made a decision to implement some software in Python. Or, more accurately, I decided and there was no disagreement. Then Python gets picked as the best scripting language in the LJ Readers' Choice survey. That inspired me to write this article (and get ready for Perl and Ruby fans to start yelling at me). To understand my position, you need to understand my background and experience. Yeah, this is is going to be long but I think it is necessary.

Oracle and now IBM seem to have strange ideas about creating a business around open source software for the enterprise. First it was Oracle's Unbreakable Linux program, derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux sans its proprietary bits and supported for peanuts to beat RHEL and similar community projects such as CentOS. Now it's IBM, which has taken old OpenOffice.org code under the now-retired Sun Industry Standards Source License and released it as a proprietary closed source freeware office suite. The first stable release of IBM Lotus Symphony, released last week, has no obvious advantages over OpenOffice.org. The suite is targeted at enterprise customers, at the expense of free and open source alternatives.

Project Gutenberg (PG) collects and maintains a library of public domain books in electronic text format, in an assortment of languages. That's all well and good, but potential readers still need a method to access PG's collection. I recently sat down to test a handful of e-text readers that offer integration with the 24,000 PG titles. Searching on Freshmeat and SourceForge.net turns up five alternatives: GutenPy, Guten, JBook, PyGE, and GutenBrowser. Of those, GutenPy, Guten, and PyGE are all Python applications, JBook is a Java app, and GutenBrowser is written in C++.

It used to be that companies could get away with stealing GPLed open-source code into their own software and no one would be the wiser. Those days are done. Oh, it still happens, but the SFLC’s (Software Freedom Law Center) recent legal actions on behalf of BusyBox’s principal developers have been putting the fear of open-source violations into unscrupulous software companies. In the latest chapter, SFLC has sued Bell Microproducts Inc. and Super Micro Computer Inc. for using BusyBox’s open-source software without honoring its open-source license.

Free-software advocate Richard Stallman has spoken out against the association of open-source software with London's "unethical" Oyster-card system. In an email sent to ZDNet.co.uk on Monday, Stallman criticised the use of open-source software, such as Red Hat Linux, JBoss middleware and Apache web-server software, in the online payment system for the Oyster contactless cards used on London's underground rail network.

The European Union competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, took a swipe at Microsoft on Tuesday by recommending that businesses and governments use software based on internationally accepted standards. Kroes has fought bitterly with Microsoft during the past four years, accusing the U.S. company of defying her orders and fining it nearly €1.7 billion, or $2.7 billion, for violating European competition rules. She did not mention Microsoft by name Tuesday, but encouraged computer users to avoid formats that, like many Microsoft products, are based on proprietary standards.

Scouts honor — the 98-year-old Boy Scouts of America (BSA) organization is adopting open-source software as a path to building better software to support the almost 3 million scouts and 1.1 million adults who make up the group. Faced with the need for a streamlined, organized way for its more than 121,000 local scout troops to find and use software for fundraisers, event registration, facilities maintenance and more, the Irving, Texas-based BSA last month launched a Web site to begin its BSA Open Source Initiative.

The Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) project allows you install new filesystems without touching your Linux kernel. The filesystems run as regular programs, allowing them to use shared libraries and perform tasks that would be difficult from inside the Linux kernel. FUSE filesystems look just like regular filesystems to other applications on the machine. In this article I'll look at compFUSEd, which is a compressed FUSE filesystem. Using compFUSEd can save a significant amount of disk space for files that are highly compressible, such as many text documents and executable files.

IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory have built the world's first petaflop machine, a supercomputer named Roadrunner designed to ensure the safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, IBM said Monday. A petaflop is equal to one thousand trillion calculations per second, and was a highly sought-after goal in the world of supercomputing. Scheduled for installation at Los Alamos in August, IBM says Roadrunner represents a breakthrough in hybrid computing, combining AMD microprocessors found in standard laptops and servers with the IBM Cell Broadband Engine chips that power Sony's PS3 gaming console.

Those of you who have enjoyed our series on theFreeBSD Desktop are due an update on the situation with the 7.0release. I recommend against it, for now.

Computer users expect their systems to work well at all times, but unfortunately this isn’t always the case. If your system becomes slow, there certainly is something you can do about it. This article will help you understand what’s happening on the system, whether it’s the computer in front of you or a system you’re accessing remotely. Naturally, I presume you’re running Linux, and the tools described here are Linux tools. If you’re on some other weird system ( ;) ), your mileage may vary.

Four countries have appealed a decision to fast-track the international standardisation of a Microsoft document format, called OpenXML. Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela have complained that there was not enough time given to discuss improvements to the format. The format is used for spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Critics claim it is not fully compatible with other document formats.

Ubuntu is on the verge of enhancing its already good name as the most end-user friendly Linux distribution by coming out with its own mobile-optimised release, Ubuntu Netbook Remix. We're on the tip of a revolution and here's why.

You remember SeeBeyond Technologies? Rather successful application integration company? Lots of really big customers and $140m in annual revenue? Purchased by Sun Microsystems in 2005 for the knockdown price of $387m. Yes, well, Sun has released Java Composite Application Suite (CAPS) 6.0, an updated version of SeeBeyond's old Integrated Composite Application Network (ICAN) suite that takes that $387m investment and throws it to the wind, as open source code.

LXer Feature: 10-Jun-2008

In a recent article, Linux File Systems: Ready for the Future?, Henry Newman expands on what he feels are shortcomings in current GNU/Linux filesystems. Specifically, he believes current Linux filesystem technology cannot meet the demands that massive implementations of 100TB or larger require. He states he received some emotional responses trying to either refute his information or impugn his character, although those comments do not show on either of the article's pages. This prompted me to get the real scoop on how Linux filesystem technology is trying to keep pace with the ever-growing need for storage space.

When edgy, risque, and retro all come together in a video game, smart people stay off the street. Off the streets of New Arcadia, circa 1922, that is, because that's where evil seems to thrive in Episode 1 of On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, a newly released game from Hothead Games and Penny Arcade. We first wrote about it last fall, and the game has just been released for Linux, Mac, Windows, and Xbox platforms. Now that we finally have Episode 1 in hand, here's our review.

Stubbornly, OpenOffice.org continues to ship with only a handful of templates. Despite the efforts of several sub-projects and individuals to change the situation, the standard OpenOffice.org download includes only a couple of slide show presentations and a few templates to accompany the wizards available in the file menu. This lack of templates is a serious handicap for many users, and often leaves a poor impression on new users who are accustomed to the selection of templates found in other office suites.

I thought I'd share with everyone who uses this resource what the future of Wine-Review entails. I also want to thank everyone for your support over the short period of time Wine-Review has been in existence. Nicolas Koch and I have been working a lot behind the scenes with Codeweavers posting bug reports for betas as well as testing a lot of things in the up and coming CrossOver Office Linux and Mac. Believe me when I tell you that so much work is being done to this release and it will yield amazing results. Look forward to this release and support Wine by purchasing CrossOver Office and get CrossOver Games for free!

Courtesy of groklaw a great research paper (pdf) from the University of Washington dissecting under which assumptions DMCA copyrights infringement takedown notices are in fact generated for BitTorrent users(1). The conclusions of the paper are most troubling and show that a number of current enforcement practices lead to poor, inconclusive identifications.

In the Windows world file system fragmentation is usually handled by periodically using a defragmenting utility on the affected file system. UNIX vigorously attempts to prevent fragmentation from ever happening in the first place. In this respect Windows and UNIX are two completely different worlds. Those coming to UNIX from a Windows background often wonder where the defragmenting tool is.