Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

As I delete spam from my Gmail spam folder, I notice the volumes increasing. A year ago, I would see about five to ten emails a day in that folder. This morning, I woke up to 56 items. The volume of spam has grown, no doubt.

You like packaged apps because they're standard, but is standard performance what your company is gunning for?

On January 21, the New York Times published a story on Linux. This wasn't an article on technical advancement: no new kernel or distribution had been released. It wasn't financial; there wasn't yet another impressive quarter from one of the many companies that build their business around Linux. Thankfully, it wasn't another piece of FUD about open source legal issues and dubious patent assertions from desperate competitors. Instead the article simply stated: "The Linux industry has united to compete against proprietary platforms." The Linux Foundation was born.

LXer Feature: 01-Apr-2007

A weekly recap of the big stories concerning Linux and Open Source.

This week's LWN looks at Get New Hot Stuff in KDE 4. Improvements currently being made by lead developer Josef Spillner include new options for uninstalling content, content synchronisation, the ability to rate content directly from the application interface, a dramatically faster interface and more. Get Hot New Stuff is now a specification on freedesktop.org and used throughout KDE in apps like Amarok and KOrganizer.

In a newsgroup message, Robert "KaiRo" Kaiser has requested feedback on possible SeaMonkey slogans. KaiRo is interested in comments on his own proposals as well as original suggestions. Current proposals include "the suite, reborn", "browse. mail. compose. chat." and "suite life".

http://www.whoissick.org recently launched a free new website focused on bringing heath information to the public by tracking and monitoring current and local sicknesses. Essentially, it is Web2.0/User generated content meets Healthcare through a very simple Google Maps interface. Given the relatively slower adoption of internet and"web 2.0' technology by much of the healthcare industry, we set out to create a simple, user-friendly, and valuable website for the average consumer.

Texas Tech University Medical School will deploy a possibly proprietary version of VistA by Document Storage Systems, Inc. According to several news reports like this one: 'The Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine has begun deploying a public domain version of the Department of Veterans Affairs' electronic health record (EHR) system developed by Document Storage Systems, according to the vendor... 'Some articles are saying that this is an open source deployment, however that may not be the case. The vendor, Document Storage Systems, is noted for being a very proprietary vendor selling its own, not Free or Open Source Licensed, proprietary version of VistA.

In what many long-time observers of free and open source software consider a natural progression, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer is to join the board of the Linux Foundation.

[What day of the year is it? ;-) - Scott]

Many free software advocates make a name for themselves by being involved with a single project. Dave Neary casts a wider net. He is a GNOME Foundation member, community manager of the OpenWengo project, and a former contributor to the GIMP project.

Embedded Linux development services provider TimeSys is among seven companies chosen for a new Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) attraction designed to showcase innovative startups. The "Disruption Zone" honors startups that significantly "speed electronics design and development, and improve digital signal and memory performance," CMP said.

Thanks to the Novell-sponsored open source Mono effort and its contributors, the idea of cross-platform ASP.NET development isn't a dream. It's a reality. But how quickly can you go from being only conceptually possible to becoming a reality and then deployed? For the winner of the first round of the Race to Linux 2 contest, it is five hours and 26 minutes.

The Fedora project this week announced the availability of the third of four development releases of Fedora 7, which can be deployed as either GNOME- or KDE-based live CDs or installed to a hard drive.

In response to recent demand for Linux preinstallation, Dell plans to expand its Linux offerings. At the present time, Dell's Linux lineup is limited to three Dell Precision workstations which come with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and sell for the exact same price as the equivalent Windows-based systems. After conducting a survey to help determine the wants and needs of Linux users, Dell decided to expand its Linux lineup to include additional desktop and notebook systems.

Once again, we're a far cry from PS3-Linux-easy, but those 360 kids seem rather hard to dissuade. The latest development on the XeLL bootloader front is that you no longer need a serial cable hooked up for executing the boot loader, all you need is a 360 set up for running burned DVDs, a modified version of the King Kong disc -- you'll want the original game, Windows and a DVD burner to get that together -- and of course a Live CD with XeLL and your Linux distro all prepped to go.

A function is a pre-defined calculation entered in a cell to help you analyze or manipulate data in a spreadsheet. All you have to do is add the arguments, and the calculation is automatically made for you. Beginners might be content to use Calc for lists, but, for advanced users, functions are the main reason for spreadsheets. If you understand functions, then you can start to use the real power of a spreadsheet.

Free Geek is a nonprofit society in Portland, Ore., dedicated to recycling computing equipment and distributing computers loaded with free software to organizations or individuals in need. Since its founding in February 2000, the group has seen sister organizations open in cities throughout North America. One of the most recently established groups is in Vancouver, Canada. We talked to David Repa, the founder and coordinator of Free Geek Vancouver, about the origins of the group and the challenges of organizing it.

Oracle is working hard to release the next version of Oracle Enterprise Linux, which is based on the recently released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. Oracle said it has at least 25 customer wins for its Oracle Enterprise Linux, including at least one customer that it shares with arch-rival Red Hat. If recent Oracle Linux trends are any indication, there will be more.

As the release iPhone draws nearer, open source browser purveyor Mozilla has joined the throng moving to release more full featured browsers for mobile devices with a new version of its own project Minimo.

A pair of Harvard University IT staffers last week released a free virtual appliance that supports their open source network access control platform -- just one of many free NAC tools springing up to address security-hungry customers.