Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

There's a scene in the 2004 movie Mean Girls in which the most popular girl in the film's fictional high school finds out that a friend who now is a fast-rising social rival plans to throw a party without inviting her. "Who does she think she is?" sniffs the suddenly-threatened clique leader - or "Queen Bee," in the movie's parlance. "I, like, 'invented' her, you know what I mean?"

Jon "maddog" Hall has made a featured guest appearance on a podcast series devoted to embedded Linux development. The veteran Linux promoter discusses binary kernel drivers, mixing proprietary and GPL software, and his "secret" retirement plan in the latest episode of TimeSys's Linux Radio podcast.

Virtualization player SWsoft hopes to continue its Chinese invasion via a new deal with local hardware heavyweight Inspur. While the likes of IBM, HP and Dell sell more servers in China, Inspur ranks as the top homegrown seller of corporate hardware. The company has now agreed to add a virtualization software component to its arsenal by pre-installing and/or reselling SWsoft's Virtuozzo package. Such a deal could be a win for SWsoft as it looks to gain ground in a market where VMware has yet to establish a dominant presence.

AMD and ATI weren't fibbing. The graphics company, now part of Advanced Micro Devices, has released high-end Catalyst 7.10 graphics drivers for the Linux desktop. ATI, once AMD bought it, promised to be more friendly to Linux desktop users. While this release still contains some proprietary bits, it does offer advanced 3D features for Linux users who are willing to use proprietary drivers.

The New York Times likes open source -- so much so that, as it gradually moves more of its print operations online, it is nurturing a Web development team that has released two of its own open source projects. XSL Cache is a PHP extension the Times is using to cache stylesheets on its Web site. DBSlayer is a tool the team developed to overcome LAMP scaling limitations that caused database replication processes to overwhelm the DB connection limits.

When I attended my first ToorCon this month, I spoke with David "h1kari" Hulton, founder and chairman of the event, to learn more about its history and intent. Among other things, I learned that his nick "h1kari" is not l33t-sp34k for hickory, as I first thought, but rather for a Japanese word meaning "divine light." I also learned that he and a friend started the San Diego 2600 group when they were 14, and ToorCon followed a year later.

Vixta is a new Linux distribution, first released only last month, based on the not-yet-released Fedora 8. Its main objective is to emulate the visual aspects of Microsoft Vista. Version 095 contains the newest, and sometimes unstable, versions of software. The project's goals include being free in every sense, requiring absolutely no configuration, and being user-friendly, eye-catching, and familiar. Too bad the goals don't include feature-complete and stable.

Here's the key fact: Facebook's users are not its customers. They're the targets to which Facebook's customers aim advertising. In old media this was no big deal. But Facebook isn't just a "medium". It's a vast walled garden where the social activity of members and visitors constantly improves the ability of advertisers to"target" both.This is a Good Thing only if it works for everybody— including both those targeted as well as those doing the targeting. And if users are actually involved, they have some important questions:What happens to my identity-related information?How is it used, and by whom?How much control do I have over my data (or data about myself)— including what Facebook"partners" do with that data?read more

Should we be ready, as Kent Brockman might put it, to "welcome our new Microsoft overlords," or are the IDC Quarterly Server Tracker figures not really reflecting the reality of how servers are used in businesses? I, for one, think that what IDC is measuring and what server operating systems people are really using are two entirely different things.

According to Wikipedia, Texas Hold'em is "the most popular poker variant played in casinos in the United States." With the GPL-licensed multiplatform (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X) PokerTH, you can play Texas Hold'em against up to six computer opponents on your desktop, or you can join an Internet server and play against other real players.

This past Sunday we started our first-ever Linux Graphics Survey that looked at the usage of X.Org display drivers, hardware, and the display features being sought after by Linux desktop users. In less than four days, we received over 10,000 survey submissions! This survey will be going on until November 21, so if you haven't yet participated you still have plenty of time to do so. But for those of you that have already taken the survey, what are the results so far? Well, below are the percentages from all of the responses collected before 10:00AM PST today.

He's faced with the unenviable task of convincing the world that Microsoft wants to play nicely with competitors - and also convincing the troops and top management that it's worth it. "It's a mixed bag," said Tom Robertson, general manager of interoperability and standards at Microsoft, when asked after his keynote at Interop 2007 in New York how company employees feel about his mission. "Everyone has to recognize … that there is a cultural shift going on."

My colleague over at Microsoft Watch, Joe Wilcox, declared that "Microsoft bowed before the EU and took its whipping." Eh, after a couple of days to look at the decision, I don't think so. At best, I'd say the European Union got the more favorable end of a draw.

Connectologist Tim Gee considers patient safety and HealthVault: Many have criticized HealthVault regarding privacy and security concerns, or perceived limitations of HV as a personal health record (PHR). I suspect that HV is challenged more by the market's perception of Microsoft's long running security issues than with any actual shortcomings of that type in HV. And since HV is not a PHR, but rather a "platform," criticisms about any lack of PHR features is not relevant. One topic I've not seen addressed is the safety and effectiveness of the data within HV - and I don't mean "safety" as in the data is secure from unauthorized access or misuse.

The Free Software Foundation's (FSF) Free Software Licensing and Compliance Lab held a public question and answer session in an IRC meeting last night. The meeting was conducted by Brett Smith, the licensing compliance engineer at the FSF. Smith began by addressing some of the recent FUD surrounding the GPLv3 license, then moved on to answering some of the questions and misconceptions regarding it.

During a session at the 2007 Online News Association conference in Toronto, Canada, I had a chance to point my video camera at Forbes columnist (and Fake Steve Jobs blogger) Dan Lyons. He told me that people who say he dislikes Linux are not being fair to him; that out of 70 articles he's written about Linux, 67 have been positive, and he absolutely denies that he is paid by Microsoft to write what he does about Linux, Apple, or anything else.

Last week we learned some useful tips about font management in Linux. Today we're going to learn a few more ways to preview fonts, how to view font character maps, how to manage console fonts, and how to design your own fonts.

Canonical this month released Ubuntu 7.10, codenamed Gutsy Gibbon. Like the Feisty Fawn release before it, Gutsy is a bleeding-edge distribution with a focus on new features and the newest free software applications. It's a speedy operating system with great new features and only a few minor issues. Ubuntu comes in three main flavors. Ubuntu features GNOME as its desktop, Kubuntu uses KDE, and Xubuntu ships with Xfce. Other derivatives of Ubuntu include Gobuntu, which contains only free software and no closed source elements, and Edubuntu, which was designed for use in classrooms.

Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, will be in South Africa next month to promote the growth of the online encyclopedia in the country's various local languages through the launch of two Wikipedia Academies.

A Silicon Valley start-up backed by an early Google employee is taking a novel approach to building a business for domestic robots and driverless vehicles: it will take it's sweet time.