Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

I recently spoke with Larry Cooperman, director of OpenCourseWare at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Larry also serves on the boards of the OpenCourseWare Consortium and the African Virtual University. I asked Larry about UC Irvine’s new OpenChem project.

With Apple's OS X 10.9 "Mavericks" having better OpenGL performance and in compliance with OpenGL 4.1 rather than being GL3-limited as with existing OS X releases, new benchmarks were carried out at Phoronix to see how well Apple's OpenGL driver stack on the current OS X 10.9 developer preview compared to Ubuntu Linux when testing the Intel graphics driver.

In the fall of 2010, I asked the biology class I teach at Western Carolina University for volunteers to help map the campus. Three years later, dozens of students have participated in learning how to use aerial photography and cartography techniques created by Public Lab.

When Microsoft announced back in January that its flagship development tools Visual Studio and Team Foundation Service would play nicely with Git, it was a sign that the tool and its online manifestation GitHub had become part of the programming furniture. Many supporters chalk that status up as a win for all things open source. Others are less certain GitHub's always helping, because many projects on the site use highly contestable licenses.

Raspberry Pi embedded development firm Geekroo has surpassed its Kickstarter funding goal for a Mini-ITX board and case that extends the RPi into a full-fledged computer (SBC). The Fairywren is equipped with a 24-pin ATX power supply connector, a four-port USB hub, a 2.5-inch HDD bay, a serial port, an IR remote module, GPIO breakout, and sockets for a built-in XBee radio and Arduino Uno boards.

I never thought how a simple photograph at a family birthday could capture the essence of an open education until my niece recently turned one year old.

But Torvalds, who founded the popular Linux kernel project in the mid-1990s, wasn't taking this lying down, claiming today's demands of "professionalism" promote passive-aggressive "fake politeness" used by tie-wearing back-stabbers. “You are in a position of power. Stop verbally abusing your developers,” Sharp hit back at Torvalds on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) - the nerve-centre of the open-source system's development.

Getting started in an unfamiliar open source project seems intimidating because it is intimidating; plunging into the unknown usually is. Navigating new territory is a lot easier with a guide—which is why I recently taught a seminar at Hacker School on "getting started contributing to open source" that mostly amounted to "first, find a mentor."

As a practicing physician in Phuket, he (Dr. Kongkiat Kespechara) became aware of some of the struggles facing hospitals. At one point the Thai government wanted to modernize all the hospitals and demanded that Information Technology be adopted right away. Then he saw the budget. No significant increase was given to help hospitals meet this expensive demand. After some ruminating he realized most of the costs would be tied up in creating the information infrastructure to capture patient records. He thought it would be a huge help to all of the hospitals if an open source solution was developed so they could all share, and called it Hospital OS.

In 2007, the Korean government first held the OSS World Challenge in an effort to promote open source software and bring awareness to developers within the country. Today, the challenge is open to entries from all over the world: OSS projects that were developed within the last year are eligible.

Blue Chip Technology announced a Ubuntu-ready “digital signage player” based on a 1GHz AMD G-Series processor with AMD Radeon HD graphics. The Vario-A2 is packaged in a polished stainless steel enclosure, runs from 0 to 40° C, accommodates internal SATA HDDs and SSDs, and has a mini-PCI Express card socket for functions such as WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, GPS, and 2G/3G modems.

Cheap, low-end PCs -- such as the Raspberry Pi and Parallella -- have become quite popular with do-it-yourself fans. Now, CompuLab, an Israeli computer OEM, is throwing its hat into the ring with its $99 Utilite mini-PC, which might also serve businesses well.

The first release candidate of version 3.11 of the Linux kernel has arrived, and to commemorate the occasion, Linux creator Linus Torvalds has given the kernel a new codename and a new, Microsoft-inspired boot logo to match. As of Sunday, Linux kernel 3.11 is officially named "Linux for Workgroups," borrowing the moniker Microsoft gave to Windows 3.11, way back in 1993.

Ever since the announcement of the Raspberry Pi, sites all across the Internet have offered lots of interesting and challenging uses for this exciting device. Although all of those ideas are great, the most obvious and perhaps least glamorous use for the Raspberry Pi (RPi) is creating your perfect home server.

OpenGL 3.1 support has been done in Mesa for some time, but OpenGL 3.2 is still a work in progress ahead of the Mesa 9.2 release. Holding back proper OpenGL 3.2 support in core Mesa is full GL Shading Language 1.50 support (GLSL 1.50) and finishing up OpenGL Geometry Shaders support. Not all Mesa drivers are supporting OpenGL 3.1~3.2 though with the modern AMD "RadeonSI" Gallium3D driver for instance still being limited to OpenGL 2.1 compliance.

The project aims to run OS X binaries on Linux in a seamless manner by leveraging GNUstep for the Apple Cocoa frameworks and implementing other OS X components needed for offering binary compatibility. The project is similar in nature to Wine but rather than running Windows applications it is about OS X support.

Our latest look at the current development state of Ubuntu 13.10 is comparing the "Saucy Salamander" performance against that of Ubuntu 13.04, 12.10, 12.04.2 LTS, and 11.10. Testing was done with an Intel Sandy Bridge system to see how the Ubuntu Linux performance has evolved over the past two years in the road to the October release of Ubuntu 13.10.

The release of the Open Data Charter by the G8 is testimony to the growing importance of open data worldwide. The Charter recognizes the central role open data can play in improving government and governance and in stimulating growth through innovation in data-driven products and services. It endorses the principle of open by default— also supported in President Obama’s recent Executive Order on open data—and makes clear that open data must be open to all and usable by both machines and humans (as per the Open Definition).

Check-It Solutions is shipping a Linux-based control and monitoring appliance for home and commercial building automation and energy management. The CG-300 Controller runs on a 1.2GHz Marvell Armada 300, offers Ethernet, ZigBee, Z-Wave, and optional LTE, and is available in a turnkey Energy Management Starter Kit with smartphone accessible web-portal services, Energy Star benchmarking, and a Dent metering device.

Since the emergence of strong cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services, Google and Rackspace, software development and deployment is increasingly taking place in the cloud. According to Gartner, cloud computing is expected to grow at a rate of 19% this year. Big industry players including Netflix and eBay already have turned to the cloud for significant proportions of their operations and offerings. And in the next few years, we are likely to see more and more innovative startups like Coupa completely suspended in the cloud, relegating on-premise computing to a vestige of a bygone era.