Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The first Season of KDE has started. The Season of KDE is a follow-up project to Google's Summer of Code, giving all the applications that did not make it into the final selection a chance to be implemented anyway. We are happy to announce that 14 students have agreed to work on their projects even without the financial support from Google.

MutableMedia has released version 2 of its OpenIPMP, a Digital Rights Management program based on open standards. The goal of the Open Source project is to provide an interoperable and easily portable solution for the management of rights to digital media on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and embedded systems.

Wi-Fi Protected Access version 2 (WPA2) is becoming the de facto standard for securing wireless networks, and a mandatory feature for all new Wi-Fi products certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance. We all know the security weaknesses of its predecessor, WEP; this time they got it right. Here's how to implement the WPA2 protocol on a Linux host and create a secure wireless access point (WAP) for your network.

This month Red Hat Magazine takes a look at the open source community in Latin America with features on the International Free Software Forum in Brazil, music with Latino flair, and the travel diary of one Red Hat associate visiting Sao Paulo for LinuxWorld.

The consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux and open source software cited a Rand Corporation study suggesting that IT budgets average just two to three per cent of overall healthcare expenditure. In contrast, IT spending comprised between 12 and 15 per cent in other industries. As a result, healthcare IT spending is expected to grow at a faster rate than overall IT, increasing the appeal of open source software.

EpiOS is a hardware-specific Linux distribution for Via Epia boards. It is based on Gentoo and KDE, and aims to support traditionally problematic Via processor features, such as hardware MPEG and cryptography acceleration, "out-of-the-box." For example, the project relies on software from the OpenChrome project, in order to support Via's advanced graphics features.

If you are scratching your head and asking "What's Ajax?", well, it's the new (really not so new) way of doing interactive web pages. It's how Google does Gmail, and more and more it's how a lot of web pages handle the need for smooth interaction with the public.

A French start-up created to build autonomous, easily programmable, affordable humanoid robots has emerged from stealth mode. Aldebaran Robotics, of Paris, expects to ship its first product -- a humanoid household service robot running Linux -- in early 2007.

Two parent volunteers at an Atlanta district school have revolutionized technology use there by replacing Windows workstations with Linux on thin clients, using K12LTSP.

[Parents and Teachers bringing the true power of FOSS to bear. - Scott]

A good system administrator is always looking for ways to make life a bit easier. The Levanta Intrepid M, a turnkey Linux management appliance, is one way to smooth out some of the rough edges of system deployment and make things run just a bit smoother in your IT environment. I spent some time using the Intrepid M appliance, and found it to be a well-designed product. Too bad the pricing makes it unsuitable for some IT budgets.

Linux leader Red Hat is aggressively pushing its Linux solutions into the telecom space with a series of new partner initiatives. One part of the push is Red Hat's partnership with IBM and HP which is intended to produce a hardware and software combination targeted at carrier-grade deployment. The other part is Red Hat's Telecommunications Partner Program, which is about driving both awareness and adoption of Red Hat-based carrier-grade solutions and platforms.

Today, just about any company can web-enable its business by having a static “billboard” web site on the Internet. As the business progresses, the static web site may then evolve to dynamic web sites with database-driven, interactive content. However, not every business has an adequate regard for the need for Internet security, even as they rush to create static or dynamic web sites.

In the last two years, Martin Michlmayr has gone from serving as Debian Project Leader to studying for a doctorate at the Centre for Technology Management, University of Cambridge. His dissertation, tentatively titled "Quality Improvement in Volunteer Free Software Projects: Exploring the Impact of Release Management," is sponsored by Google, Intel, and other companies with an interest in free software development.

Sauce for the gooseMalware authors are adopting open source development models to develop more potent threats. It's well known among security experts that botnet clients such as SDBot are written in a modular framework that allows hackers to add features that, for example, facilitate its spread through IM networks or add more potent attack features.…

If you're using Asterisk for your voice over IP needs, you'll need to lock down your Asterisk server, and that begins with secure passwords.

The open source network simulation tool ns-2 is an invaluable tool for researchers working on wired or wireless networks. I came across ns-2 while working on my thesis. I needed a network simulator, and since my college lacked the brand-name heavyweights, I had to look for an alternative that was free but could do the job. While ns-2 is free, it's also pretty unfriendly.

The Free Standards Group...today announced Linuxprinting.org, the de facto standard repository for printer drivers on Linux, is merging with the FSG's OpenPrinting workgroup and will be integrated and supported in the Linux Standard Base (LSB). The result will be easier and standardized printing functionality on Linux and an ease of support for Linux and printing vendors and makes the Free Standards Group the central organization for printing on Linux and open source Unix.

Welcome to this year's 29th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Harald Welte announces the availability of a root filesystem based on Debian sarge and a corresponding kernel plus instructions for EZX phones. Raphaël Hertzog has the impression that the Debian project is merely trying to keep packages up-to-date and that the project is not making any significant improvements.

Every sysadmin will try its best to secure the system/s he is managing. Hopefully you never had to restore your own system from a compromise and you will not have to do this in the future. Working on several projects to restore a compromised Linux system for various clients, I have developed a set of rules that others might find useful in similar situations.

How does one live in Gloucester County in the summer and study penguins? Gloucester resident and Virginia Institute of Marine Science student Heidi Geisz is finding out.

[Ok, ok, it's not about FOSS, but it mentions penguins, Gentoo and Adele. It's still fascinating. -- grouch]