Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

A year has passed since Linden Lab, maker of the popular 3-D virtual world Second Life, released the source code to its Second Life viewer under the GNU GPL. In that time, a viable community of developers has grown up around the SL code, and the company is pleased enough with the success that it has branched out further into open source and open standards.

TorrentFlux is a BitTorrent client that runs on top of a server running Apache, MySQL, and PHP. It extends the functionality of traditional clients by operating almost entirely through a Web browser interface. It uses the BitTornado client in the background to manage the queuing, downloading, and seeding of torrent files. You can run TorrentFlux on your home machine and access it through a folder on a Web server. You can also install it on an external host to increase bandwidth and transfer speeds.

A couple of weeks ago Hans Bakker, who had never touched KOffice code before, started hacking on a Krita plugin for the 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator. Within a week or two he had a working plugin for Krita and it quickly became clear how cool these little devices are and how many possibilities for new user interaction paradigms they afford.

A change to GCC for a recent release coupled with a kernel bug has created a messy situation, with possible security implications. GCC changed some assumptions about x86 processor flags, in accordance with the ABI standard, that can lead to memory corruption for programs built with GCC 4.3.0. No one has come up with a way to exploit the flaw, at least yet, but it clearly is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Drupal is a modular content management system. It allows a user or group of users to construct Web sites, blogs, or forums by providing the framework for users with little or no PHP or database experience. It grows more popular with each new release because it becomes easier to use each new release. Drupal 6.0 (and 6.1) were recently released after a year of development. The new features and improvements make for an impressive content management platform.

This hands-on review compares and contrasts two computing appliances that run Linux on Via C7-M processors. The Zonbu Zonbook and the gOS Cloudbook are both manufactured by Everex, and cost about the same up-front, but that's where the resemblance ends, our reviewer found.

You can find Linux clients for several file-sharing networks. Taking into account how many clients are available for each, the current top three peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are eDonkey2000, FastTrack (derived from Kazaa), and Gnutella. Here are some desktop applications that allow you to become a full-fledged file sharer.

I was doing some research on a paper I am writing about open source usability practices when it hit me..

A web-friendly and easy to maintain version of Eclipse has been penciled in for delivery two years from now. E4, as it's being called, has been pegged for 2010, with a working concept prototype ready for next year's EclipseCon.

Just as Microsoft Paint is included with every Windows installation, so KolourPaint has been part of the kdegraphics package since KDE 3.3. This simple raster graphics editor works well not only in KDE, but also in Xfce, GNOME, and Fluxbox. Although it started out as a clone of Microsoft Paint, KolourPaint has grown to include more features than its proprietary inspiration. KolourPaint provides tools for image manipulation and icon editing as well as the typical "fingerpainting" that Paint is well known for. KolourPaint's and Paint's interfaces are nearly identical, but hidden behind a simple interface are several advanced features that make it a great graphics editor.

Thingamablog is a cross-platform GPL blogging application that lets you create, update, and maintain multiple blogs from the client side. Thingamablog even acts as its own FTP client when you're ready to publish or update your blog with new content. The software is easy enough for beginners to use, but sophisticated enough that veteran bloggers will appreciate it too.

The Hans Reiser murder trial resumed here Wednesday with the defendant fumbling on the witness stand. "Are you just making these things up?" Alameda County prosecutor Paul Hora asked at one point. Hans Reiser underwent a second day of grueling cross-examination by Hora who claims the Linux programmer killed his wife, Nina Reiser, amid a bitter divorce and custody battle over their two young children. The defendant had spent nearly five days on the stand under direct examination before it came to an abrupt halt at noon Tuesday.

The new software lets content providers encrypt FLV and F4V audio and video files and then set access policies for them. Basically, DRM technology is now being applied to Flash and broadcasting firms will now be able to enforce access requirements and expiration dates to content, even after it has been distributed, to make sure it isn’t reused or passed on without permission.

Making changes to your existing infrastructure is fraught with decisions. What's the best way to consolidate servers? How can we better manage the resources we have? How will the changes we're planning impact service and performance? Sandbox environments only provide theoretical information. Vendor solutions can number into the dozens, so it's easy to get overwhelmed. The Computer Measurement Group (CMG) understands that, so for more than 30 years it has been amassing a huge database of knowledge so you can learn from the successes -- and failures -- of others.

For far longer than any of its developers would care to recall, Wine, the best program to use in Linux to run Windows applications, has been in development. Now, at long last, Wine 1.0 is scheduled to be released.

An experimental new design for Linux's virtual memory system would turn a large amount of system RAM into a fast RAM disk with automatic sync to magnetic media

Dr Stephen Lucey joined Becta in 2000 and is now their Executive Director (Strategic Technologies). Becta is the Government organisation with oversight of all things ICT in UK schools. Apart from being a general advocate for ICT in schools, it is charged with providing strategic leadership, technical direction and advice on obtaining best value.

The security vendor has warned of multiple critical vulnerabilities that affect its products as well as various iterations of Linux-archiving software.

Tired of all the knee-jerk banter from fanboys about whose operating system is the most secure? So are the organizers of the CanSecWest security conference, which will be held in Vancouver later this month. And with a contest awarding as much as $25,000 worth of prizes, they're likely to breathe fresh life into a stale debate.

For open source, a choice between Google and Microsoft is a false choice. Yet that’s what Google CEO Eric Schmidt is offering, as when he claims a Microsoft-Yahoo combination might “break the Internet” or that the two might act against the openness of the Internet. It’s a false choice, in part, because neither Google nor Microsoft can come to the argument with clean hands. Google’s open source efforts are mainly done under Apache licenses, which don’t require they be shared. It does not support the AGPL.