Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

LXer Feature: 08-Jul-2007

The big stories this week include Microsoft's attempts to distance itself from the effects of the GPLv3, Part 2 of Carla Schroder's Adventures in Digital Photography, using Live Linux distro's for online banking, Massachusetts decides that XML is ok and the BSA ups the ante on getting people to "Blow The Whistle". All this and more await you in this weeks LXer Roundup.

As some of you may already know, I've been in the process of setting up a new server to host my sites. My old VPS just can't handle the load anymore. Since I'm not really making a lot of money off the sites (Maybe $100 a month, if that), my budget is definitely tight. Here's how I setup a server, capable of supporting over 4,000 static requests per second, and over 1,000 PhP requests for second (Using a Joomla installation with SEF enabled). Oh, and I only spent $800 on hardware, and $50 a month for a datacenter with 100mbit up link to the internet (billed on monthly transfer). The server is great for hosting a few sites (lets say up to 20 or so), but could be setup to serve thousands of sites. So, here's how I did it.

New U.S. regulations went into effect today that could change how vendors of devices with software-defined radios (SDR) use open-source software. The new rules could impact manufacturers of mobile phones, WiFi cards, and other devices that use SDR technologies.

Nokia has released updated firmware for its Linux-based N800 Internet Tablet. The fourth Tablet OS 2007 release this year -- "4.2007.26-8" -- brings a Skype client, Flash 9 player, and support for 8GB SD memory cards, while Nokia's own VoIP service beta installer has been removed.

Are Microsoft’s patent lawyers playing possum? Or are they really as clueless about what makes open-source software tick as they seem?

Ingo Molnar released version 19 of his CFS scheduler patchset, first released back in April. He noted: "The biggest user-visible change in -v19 is reworked sleeper fairness: it's similar in behavior to -v18 but works more consistently across nice levels. Fork-happy workloads (like kernel builds) should behave better as well. There are also a handful of speedups: unsigned math, 32-bit speedups, O(1) task pickup, debloating and other micro-optimizations."

By this time, you should have guessed that running KDE takes a large chunk of machine resources. Really old machines will run this latest version of KDE quite slowly. I chose it for the FreeBSD beginner because it’s a good safe place to start, with so many built-in tools. One of the most important ones up to now has been KPPP — the dialup tool. In this lesson we are going to learn how to dialup without KPPP. With that, about the only reason to keep using KDE is simply that you like it.

By his own description, Dirk Riehle is a major fan of open source software. Riehle, leader of the open source research group at SAP Labs in Palo Alto, California, spends countless hours theorizing about the economics of this emerging software trend. He’s the author of The Economic Motivation of Open Source Software, a scholarly article that describes significant shifts in the software business. Datamation spoke with him about how these shifts are shaping the pay levels of open source developers.

Akaza Research announces that it has completed a comprehensive onsite training for the Kemri-Wellcome Research Programme for using the OpenClinica Enterprise platform for its clinical research activities in Kenya.

Recently Joseph Conn wrote an excellent article on VistA. A Modern Healthcare reader replied with a comment titledAntiquated system slowing EHR transformation which essentially argued that VistA was holding health IT back... because its old. Thankfully Modern Healthcare has also published my replyVistA: You say 'antiquated;' I say 'proven'. I offer more thoughts on the subject over atGPLMedicine.org in my post'antiquated' vs 'proven' -Trotter

While the new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations about software-defined radios don't really restrict independent FOSS developers, the rules are"more conservative than is necessary" because of perceived security issues, according to a white paper released today by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC).

Redmond says it's not a party to the new license. And those Suse Linux coupons won't get you any support guarantees.

RPMS may be an alternative to VistA that you may want to consider. If one were looking to acquire and implement a comprehensive "open source" electronic health record (EHR) system, serious consideration should be paid to the Resource and Patient Management System (RPMS) used by the Indian Health Service (IHS). RPMS is an adaptation of the VistA health information system originally developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), modified to meet the needs of IHS.

eHealth News Portal is presenting a news article related to the last IBM announce that it has made available an advanced software technology that can help predict the transmission of diseases across countries and around the globe to the open source community. The tool will aid scientists and public health officials in understanding and planning more efficient responses to health crises, ultimately providing new tools for protecting population health.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is investing US$7.5 million in energy-efficient chip company Transmeta Corp., which has been battling falling revenue and widening losses.

[Looks like Linus's former employer is being acquired by AMD. - Scott]

Red Hat Summit 2007 collected hundreds of Linux users all in one place–many of them experienced Red Hat Certified Engineers® (RHCE). And somewhere between all those smart people walking around–and our video crew shooting footage–the idea for some video tips was born.

What happens when a fan of Free Software and wikies wish to motivate your girlfriend to her Medicine studies? You could think in many things but possibly not to create a multilanguage wiki about Medicine and human health to her, but was exactly that what I did, and I couldn't choose a best gift.

On Tuesday, the Summer of Code BoF was held at aKademy 2007. I conducted an interview with Emanuele Tamponi about the session and his first experiences of aKademy.

aKademy 2007 is continuing. Tuesday featured the Education Day and many smaller BoF sessions. In the meantime, hackers worked around-the-clock on various projects, both in the 'quiet' area and in the discussion area.

Earlier this year, former US senator and presidential candidate Bill Bradley published The New American Story, a book about reforming the American agenda. As part of that process and as a public citizen, he has joined open source activists to produce a Web-based window into the US federal budget.