Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Google has accused Oracle of doctoring the code samples that allegedly prove Mountain View pilfered Oracle's copyrighted Java code in building its Android mobile operating system. Late last month, as part of its ongoing lawsuit over the use of Java in Android, Oracle waved six pages of Android code at a federal court (see below), claiming they were "directly copied" from copyrighted Oracle code. But, on Wednesday, Google responded with a court filing of its own, and among so many other things, Mountain View said that in submitting the code, Oracle "redacted or deleted...both expressive material and copyright headers." Google called these omissions "significant elements and features."

The Apache Software Foundation’s latest statement on the Java Community Process highlights continued dissatisfaction and dissent from Oracle’s stewardship and involvement in open source software.

In Part 1 Gimp guru Akkana Peck showed us how to cut arbitrary objects out of images. Today we learn advanced techniques for seamless blending into new images.

Mozilla has announced the availability of Firefox 4 beta 7, a prerelease build for users who want to help test the next major version of the popular open source Web browser. It includes JaegerMonkey, Mozilla's enhanced JavaScript engine. During our tests of the new beta, we were consistently impressed by its outstanding performance and greatly improved responsiveness. It delivers highly competitive performance and puts Firefox back on an even footing with its rivals. The beta also brings the Firefox 4 theming overhaul to Linux, including the new tab position above the address bar.

Red Hat announced a major new Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 release, adding cloud support, performance improvements, and energy savings. Meanwhile, Red Hat also released a RHEL 5.6 upgrade to its 5x platform, adding support for BIND 9.7, improved DNSsec, and PHP 5.3.

If you are the type of person who can’t live without internet, wake up every morning and check your Facebook account before having coffee, always tweet a new update every 15 minutes and have a large circle of friends on social media websites – you are going to love RockMelt. RockMelt is a new web browser, backed by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, which aims to bridge the gap between social sharing and web surfing. The browser is build around your social circle, feeds, search results and friends.

Security researchers have demonstrated two vulnerabilities that allow attackers to install apps on Android and its vendor-specific implementations without a user's permission. During normal installation, users are at least asked to confirm whether an application is to have certain access rights. Bypassing this confirmation request reportedly allows spyware or even diallers to be installed on a smartphone.

Network File System (NFS) has been around since 1984, but it continues to evolve and provide the basis for distributed file systems. Today, NFS (through the pNFS extension) provides scalable access to files distributed across a network. Explore the ideas behind distributed file systems and in particular, recent advances in NFS.

It's been two years since the release of Urban Terror 4.1, an open-source first person shooter powered by the ioquake3 engine that started out originally as a Quake 3 mod. Extensive work has been made towards the next release, Urban Terror 4.2, with significant improvements being made from new maps and visuals to a new graphics renderer. However, this past week the Urban Terror developers announced some rather surprising changes, which includes Urban Terror no longer being distributed as an open-source, GPL game.

Cathy Malmrose, the CEO of independent Linux vendor ZaReason, Inc., is a keynote speaker at the upcoming FOSDEM conference in Brussels on Feb. 5-6, 2011. FOSDEM bills itself as "the biggest free and non-commercial event organized by and for the community."

Oracle‘s Java ambassador Henrik Ståhl has reacted to reports from various media outlets about a dual license for the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) based on a merger of the JRockit and HotSpot virtual machines. As presented at JavaOne in September, this "united" JVM is to consist of the best features of the two JVMs. The result is to be incrementally implemented in OpenJDK, although a number of components – such as Sun’s Java for Business and Oracle’s JRockit Mission Control, JRockit Real Time and JRockit Virtual Edition – will continue to be sold as proprietary, commercial premium extensions.

While the discussion surrounding the Wayland Display Server and Canonical's plans to deploy Ubuntu atop Wayland continue to be ongoing within our forums (here, here, and here) and elsewhere, some new technical capabilities and plans for Wayland have been discussed. Here's two features that Wayland is set to have that is not currently supported by the X.Org Server.

ActiveState, the dynamic language experts offering solutions for Perl, Python, and Tcl, announced today a robust sales revenue growth rate of 43% for the third quarter of 2010 and an average revenue growth rate overall from last year, year-to-date (YTD) of 19%. These strong revenue growth rates were led by a stellar line up of new Business and Enterprise Edition customers in the second and third quarters this year over a wide range of verticals including high-tech, financial services, healthcare, and aerospace companies: BNP Paribas, Cardinal Health, Daiichi Sankyo USA, Health Now, Juniper Networks, McAfee, Northrop Grumman, Research Affiliates, Standard Chartered Bank China, Tesco Bank, Vodafone, Omnitel.

Having just discussed replication in Linux -- what it is, how it can be used and how it's not the same as a backup -- it's time to tackle a simple example of one of the replication tools: rsync. You will be surprised how easy it is to use rsync to replicate data to a second storage pool.

You read the Fastest Flash article so you already know Ext4 can turbocharge your thumb drive. But you run Linux, so of course want even more! Is there anything else to do? Yup. Use a GPT (GUID Partition Table) rather than the usual MBR scheme. It will hop up flash performance on almost any filesystem -- not just Ext4.

Balancing work, home, school, or any other component of your life can be hectic. Many people use computers with the intention to simplify their lives, but that does not always happen. One of the biggest obstacles to effective use of computers is file and application organization. File managers, docks, panels, task bars, and other similar tools are all designed to make file management easier. KDE 4 offers an alternative to the traditional icons scattered all over the desktop with a Plasma widget called Shelf. Just like a shelf in a library, the shelf widget keeps files, folders, devices, and applications in order and easily accessible.

Once a year I write a column the week before the big HPC show. This year SC10 (a.k.a. the show) will be in New Orleans. I assume very few people will actually read this installment because they are either in the Big Easy, on their way, or running around frantically trying to get ready for their week on Bourbon Street. I fall into the last category. I have have been preparing my Limulus Machine, writing a white paper, helping a few clients, and smashing my thumb with a step ladder.

Charging that Oracle has willfully disregarded the licensing terms for its own Java technology, the Apache Software Foundation has called upon other members of the Java Community Process (JCP) to vote against the next proposed version of the language, should Oracle continue to impose restrictions on open-source Java use.

The Apache Software Foundation is usually a nice, quiet organization that supports the development of quite a lot of open source software. Unlike the Free Software Foundation, it doesn't usually get political or controversial. But the ASF is calling Oracle out over its handling of the Java Community Process (JCP).

Public speaking and giving presentations are stressful enough for most folks — why add to that with complex software and worries about platform compatibility? If you know a bit about HTML and how to work a browser, S5 is a standards-based slide show system that can take the hassle out of creating presentations.