Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Google has opened its cloud to outside developers. Last night, while eating S'mores at an intimate developer gathering dubbed Campfire One, the world's largest ad broker unveiled App Engine, a free service that lets anyone to build and run web apps on Google's very own distributed infrastructure. The cool kids call this cloud computing.

How do you herd cats? Well, as the famous EDS commercial shows, it isn't easy. In a sense, that's what the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit pro-Linux organization, will be doing this week at the invitation-only LF Collaboration Summit at the University of Texas Super Computing Center here. Linux, as anyone who follows it knows, is the result of the efforts of hundreds of developers, and it serves the needs of at least as many companies and--thanks to its role in leading Web sites such as Google and its popularity with Web-hosting companies--hundreds of millions of users.

PC vendor Everex and gOS (Good OS), the Linux distribution based around Google applications, is taking the next step in online-based computing by introducing a limited edition MySpace PC. The companies hope that the white-cased, two-pound MyMiniPC will attract what Everex officials claim is some of the more than 100 million MySpace users. As such, it's the first PC, using any operating system, designed expressly to use with a social network.

IDC analyst Al Gillen, who is giving the opening keynote at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit kicking off today in Austin, Texas, is expected to cite figures from an IDC white paper entitled "The Role of Linux Servers in Commercial Workloads" that show that Linux has done well and proved itself in the enterprise, and is expected to continue that trend through 2011.

The Linux Driver Project (LDP) is alive and well, with over 300 developers wanting to participate, many drivers already written and accepted into the Linux kernel tree, and many more being currently developed. The main problem is a lack of projects. It turns out that there really isn't much hardware that Linux doesn't already support. Almost all new hardware produced is coming with a Linux driver already written by the company, or by the community with help from the company.

Though I have my doubts, PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles) may be on the same track towards open hardware we are seeing in some computer components and devices. Be warned, however, the effort is grounded in marketing and survival instincts that just might not suffice to become a success. Although use of open source is established for use in PHEV, the same cannot be said of the hardware components. The reader must recognize what is quoted below is mainly a self interested party pushing a marketing scheme. I would hope it works, however, I have good reasons for skepticism. Moreover, it was the individual, engineering types that created and posted the how-to instructions and schematics.

One more of the world's biggest technology companies is clamoring to enter the growing market for pint-sized computers targeted mainly for pint-sized customers.

KDE 4 is a radical overhaul of the popular desktop. It offers broad improvements like the Oxygen desktop theme, SVG graphics, and enhanced speeds thanks to the latest version of the Qt 4 toolkit. It also offers specific improvements such as the font manager and the Dolphin file manager. In short, there's a lot to like.

A small group of individuals and some small, specialized companies [see CalCars poster in right hand column] have been gaining increasing public visibility in their push to entice major auto manufacturers to begin producing plug-in hybrid electric vehicles [PHEV]. More recently some very large corporate entities have joined the chorus, Southern California Edison will be using Ford Escape vehicles and even PE&G will see power sold back from one Google test fleet vehicles. In contrast, the major automobile manufactures stumbled unintentionally into the spot light.

Smart cards and digital signatures are presented as among the most important components of e-government in Europe, but they are still far from being an effective, Linux-friendly solution to reduce administrative and business costs. But the same tools may become a way to make the general public use or support Free Software.

Many people know that free and open source software (FOSS) plays a role in creating the technical infrastructure of developing nations and in preserving endangered languages. With the Orca screen reader, FOSS takes on the new role of providing access to computers and the Internet to people with disabilities. The project is quickly catching up with proprietary accessibility options, and is already being widely deployed as a low-cost alternative.

MegaLap, a notebook computer from ZaReason, a company that builds and sells computer systems that run Ubuntu, is bound to give its owner bragging rights at any LAN party, especially with how loud the system can get. It has the hallmarks of on-the-go computing, while performing comparably to a desktop gaming system.

Ever since Sun anteed up a billion in cold cash for MySQL a couple months back, we wondered when the next shoe would drop. Recently, EnterpriseDB announced that IBM was one of several venture backers to fund its third $10m round of financing. At first glance, this appears to be IBM's response to Sun. But it isn't.

In a few years' time, almost all businesses will use open source, according to Gartner; even though IT managers may be unaware of it, and prefer to talk about fashions such as software as a service. Open source promoters have welcomed the endorsement by what is seen as a conservative commentator, but predict the changes will go further than Gartner assumes.

Some days, like it or not, you need a lawyer. For most business purposes, picking the right law firm isn't usually that big of a deal. Chances are you already have at least an idea of how to find a contract lawyer, a tax law specialist or a real-estate attorney. But what if your programmers are using open-source code that's licensed under two different licenses? What if you're concerned with how a patent might affect open-source software your company is already using? Or let's say a company based in Utah decides that you've put its proprietary code into Linux, who do you turn to then? Now, what should you be looking for in a law firm?

LXer Feature: 06-Apr-2008

In this week's Roundup we have all kinds of ISO and Microsoft related articles like Microsoft's Great Besmirching, OpenXML ISO approved and Microsoft's new weapon against open source: stupidity, amongst others. Also we have So why don't I run Linux?, Time is right for Linux PCs to emerge, Linux's Impact: The Return of XP and we have a tutorial written by Thomas King on how set up a letterhead in OpenOffice. With April fools just having passed I decided not to have a FUD section this week, it would have been just a little too much fun.

Computing is fun! Well at least thats until Microsoft drove it out of the equation. I mean with Windows everything is just bland, monotonous, and just ordinary. Even it’s name is such a snooze-fest! The whole idea of window computing by no mean exclusive to Microsoft, it has been around for quite some time, one could argue that it isn’t that “earth shattering” of an invention. So why name your flagship product after a technology that’s not yours and has been around for quite sometime? Beats me!

Each year it seems that there are more and more grumblings about how commercial Open Source conferences are moving further and further away from Free Software and Open Source communities. Incongruously, some of the loudest (or at least most noticed) complaining comes from some of the most consistent participants on the conference circuit. I myself have joined in the guilty pleasure of kvetching about how this year's iteration of a given conference just doesn't have the same soul as some previous year.

Chinese authorities appeared to have lifted a block on the English-language version of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, but politically sensitive topics such as Tibet and Tiananmen Square are still off limits. Internet users in Beijing and Shanghai confirmed today they could access the English-language version of one of the world's most popular websites, but the Chinese language version was still restricted.

Thanks to the use of the MadWifi modules by the Linux kernel, it is possible to implement a Wireless Access Point with a Personal Computer or an Embedded Device that has a WiFi network card (PCI or MiniPCI) with an Atheros chipset. This feature is available starting with version 1.0.beta8 of Zeroshell, which introduces WiFi support in either AP (Access Point) or STA mode (in which a Zeroshell router/bridge can be associated as a client in a Wireless LAN).