Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

In the spring of 1983 I went to work for Digital Equipment Corporation. At that time Digital was mostly providing support for different flavors of Unix on their PDP-11 and VAX lines of computers for the telephone company and universities that were using them. However, a decision had been made to make and release a binary-only version of the Unix operating system so commercial customers could get it without having to pay the very high source-code license fee that AT&T required of them.

PatientOS version 0.21 adds major scheduling functionality. Appointment types can be defined in batches , double or any number of overbooking predefined on the schedule with all appointments defined with a custom color. Appointments can be rescheduled. Multiple resources viewed by day or week. Custom work schedules, blocking out of schedules.

The KDE Release Team has decided to release KDE 4.0 this coming January. The release was originally planned for mid-December. The KDE developers want to solve a couple of essential issues before releasing. Having solved some of those issues, among which were glitches in the visual appearance, and in Konqueror, the KDE community hopes to have a KDE 4.0 that will live up to the high expectations for it.

In the preceding sections about multi-processor handling we have seen that significant performance problems must be expected if the number of CPUs or cores is scaled up. But this scaling-up is exactly what has to be expected in the future. Processors will get more and more cores, and programs must be ever more parallel to take advantage of the increased potential of the CPU, since single-core performance will not rise as quickly as it used to.

ES is an interesting looking open source research OS created by Nintendo. It runs natively on x86 and qemu. The kernel is written in C++ it uses an ECMAScript interpreter for all of the userland and it uses Cairo for graphics and even has a port of Squeak.

Mozilla has issued a fix for a bug found in an update issued earlier this week. Officials at Mozilla said they have released an update to fix a flaw in the recently released 2.0.0.10 version of their Firefox browser. It is the first time ever Mozilla has released two versions of the open-source browser in the same week. When Mozilla released Firefox 2.0.0.10 Monday, it included a bug in its rendering canvas HTML elements. Canvas elements allow for dynamic, scriptable rendering of bitmap images in HTML.

I am increasingly convinced all of the arguments between Linux distributions are going to become moot very soon. If they aren't there already. Not that I have anything against diversity, mind you. I have (and will) actively support the right to create and use any Linux distribution you want. My concern is, I think the distributions are becoming so similar in their construction, and the differences between them so subtle, the whole notion of distribution superiority is completely moot.

Lawyers for plaintiffs in a case brought against Microsoft over Vista's marketing have claimed that even the software giant's marketing director was confused by the pre-launch campaign in the United States. The case involves the way Microsoft marketed PCs as "Windows Vista capable" prior to the consumer launch of the operating system in January.

[Looks like even Microsoft doesn't know which computers can actually handle a Vista upgrade - Scott]

People in South Korea speak of folks in North Korea more as lost brothers than bitter enemies. Over the years the two have made various rapprochements, but now it looks like North and South are teaming up on a whole new kind of joint project: a Korean-language Linux distribution.

A stability and security update to SeaMonkey, the community-driven continuation of the all-in-one Mozilla Application Suite, has been released. As detailed in the SeaMonkey 1.1.7 section of the Mozilla Foundation Security Advisories page, the upgrade includes the same security patches as Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.10, which was also made available this week.

Neil Wilson, a recently laid-off Sun Microsystems employee and a former owner of the OpenDS project, has accused his ex-boss of using strong-arm tactics to keep control of his project. In an open letter Wilson said he's finally gone public to "clear the air" having kept quit for fear of potential retaliation from Sun. Retaliation in this case meant lost severance.

The Mozilla Corporation today released Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.11, the second minor update to the browser delivered this week. This upgrade has been rushed out to fix a regression introduced in Firefox 2.0.0.10, which broke the drawImage method of the canvas element.

At one point in time and not too very long ago, I fancied myself a decent system administrator with a decent resume and work history. When I finished a series of writing tasks working on technology subjects that included system administration, I thought the time had come for me to work in a shop with Linux and MS. I put my resume up on Dice and Monster and waited for the phone to ring. When it didn't ring, I went up to see the hits. I saw six on Monster and eight on Dice. Only one company saved my data.

IPCop is a specialized Linux distribution whose sole purpose is to safeguard the computers and networks it is installed on. The distro proudly claims, "The Bad Packets Stop Here!" I recently installed IPCop 1.4.16 on my SOHO LAN, and found that it accomplishes what it sets out to do. My LAN is constantly in a state of flux, but at a minimum it contains at least two computers and a wireless access point. I use the wireless router both for Internet access from my laptop and to provide access to a Hewlett-Packard network printer that's located in a spot where a cable would be inconvenient. I add and remove the odd computer from the mix on an ongoing basis.

SoX is a power-packed command-line tool for various types of audio processing. It's very useful as an audio format converter, and it can be used for resampling audio files, converting between endianness, audio encoding and modifying other attributes of common audio file formats. Its main power, however, is its effect plugins. It can apply various effects to audio in the same way a digital audio workstation does. You can add echoes, filter frequencies, reduce or increase volume, remove noise and do various other advanced digital signal processing on sound samples.

A recent conference on open source in education at Seneca College generated interesting thoughts, published in Frank Hecker’s blog. (Hecker works for Mozilla.) This piece isn’t really about technology, but about how open source practices impact career and educational opportunities. A good read for big thinkers.

Even if you work only in Linux, you'll likely have to use Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM) files at one time or another. Several open source projects use this common format, including Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Python, and PHP. Microsoft developed CHM as a proprietary format for Windows 98, leaving behind the previous WinHelp (HLP) format. CHM is still alive and kicking in XP and Vista, though some applications use the newer Microsoft Help 2 format.

Creating a high-quality chart for the Web can be a challenging task, but open source software like Open Flash Chart (OFC) makes it a cinch. As you might guess from its name, the core engine of OFC is written in Adobe Flash. Although this means that users need a Flash browser plugin to view charts created with OFC, this approach has a significant advantage: it allows you to produce professional-quality graphs with minimum effort, because the core engine does all the heavy lifting, and all you need to do is to specify configuration options for your chart and feed data into it.

Issue #7 of Full Circle, the community-driven Ubuntu Linux magazine, is out with features on Ubuntu Studio, Wabi the Windows Ubuntu installer, and the best audio and video apps.

Slackware Linux today features a powerful and easy-to-use package management system, but making Slackware packages has not always been straightforward. Now Slackware application developers have a tool for easily making Slackware packages from source code and precompiled binaries. Src2pkg, now in version 1.6, very nearly lives up to its author's tag of being Slackware's "magic package maker."