Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

One of the new features that Mozilla introduced in Firefox 4 is a Do Not Track (DNT) setting. When the user enables the DNT option in the browser's preference dialog, Firefox will transmit a custom header in HTTP requests that will inform servers that the user wants to opt out of Internet tracking. The concept has obvious merit because it provides a simpler, more predictable, and more consistent approach than the cookie-based mechanisms that are currently used today to signify opt-out status.

The stable release of Drizzle has generated a lot of interest in migrating previous MySQL web sites to Drizzle. The good news for people attempting such migrations is that this isn't incredibly difficult in many cases; this article will describe what to look out for and how to go about converting a web site or any other database related project.

Why leave a sinking ship? Is Nokia wobbling over its commitment to Windows? Or just stringing along the Symbian and Qt faithful? The cell-phone giant has published a lengthy open letter pleading with coders to keep building apps for phones running Symbian and Qt - at least in the short term.

As mentioned this morning when AMD provided Canonical with a Catalyst 11.4 driver pre-release for proprietary Radeon / FirePro support under Ubuntu 11.04, there's more than just support for Linux 2.6.38 kernel and X.Org Server 1.10. This Linux driver update also provides support for AMD PowerXpress with dual-GPU notebooks.

Supergamer is, as you might guess, a Linux distribution whose main focus is on gaming. It's based on a lighter distributions, features a light desktop, and is chocked full of games and demos. It began life in the Spring of 2006 and was received with great enthusiasm. As time went by and with a few similar entries coming into the field, one doesn't hear the name Supergamer as much anymore. But this is tragedy.

When looking for a solution to any problem, you should always follow your instincts. Linux is what I do and it rarely fails me. Linux, once again, has saved me hundreds of dollars and several headaches by being versatile, free, and powerful. This week, you’ll learn how I turned a giant lemon into a bucket of lemonade using the DD-WRT project, a never-used Linksys (Cisco) wireless router, and my Internet service provider’s router. I created an extended network for my home computer setup. By bridging the two routers, I effectively created a Home Area Network so that I could have a data center in my garage.

Torvalds said that he considers 2.6.39 more of a solid version with a boring amount of progress – however, with ipset, the Xen network backend, as well as many new and improved drivers, the new kernel, which is expected to be released in late May or early June, does offer numerous improvements which matter to end users.

Way back in the early days of Linux, shortly after Linus Torvalds switched the kernel from his own "non-commercial" license to the GPL, he also added an important clarification to the kernel's license. In the COPYING file at the top of the kernel tree since mid-1993, there has been a clear statement that Torvalds, at least, does not consider user-space programs to be derived from the kernel, and thus are not subject to the kernel's license..

Google open source guru Chris DiBona says that the web giant continues to ban the lightning-rod AGPL open source license within the company because doing so "saves engineering time" and because most AGPL projects are of no use to the company. The Affero GPL is designed to close the so-called "application service provider loophole" in the GPL, which lets ASPs use GPL code without distributing their changes back to the open source community. Under the AGPL, if you use code in a web service, you required to open source it.

Google open source guru Chris DiBona has called on NASA to use more open source code in its aerospace program, urging the government agency to test free software in unmanned flights and "blow-up some robots."

Linux is usually exciting, but this past week brought several nice developments. Slackware announced another developmental milestone for their next version. Bodhi Linux reached 1.0. Foresight announced their first release in two years. Zenwalk developers released version 7.0. And SimplyMepis gets a release candidate.

The Foresight Linux project released Foresight Linux 2.5, the first major release of this rolling-release Linux distro in two years, featuring Linux 2.6.35, GNOME 2.32.1, KDE 4.6.1, and Xfce 4.8. Meanwhile, rPath released rPath X6, a specialized Linux distro and appliance-building system that, like Foresight, is based on the Conary package manager.

Android will surge to a dominant 39.5 percent share of the fast-growing global smartphone market this year, then further climb slowly to a 45.4 percent share by 2015, says IDC. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 will see the fastest growth as it supplants Symbian to reach a second-place 20.9 percent share by 2015, the research firm projects.

The trouble with open source is that most coders aren't lawyers and most lawyers aren't coders. And even if everyone did wear both hats, there would still be ample room for disagreement. The law, you must remember, is subjective.

There's just one week left to win one of three copies of Unigine's OilRush game, which is a real-time strategy for Linux / Mac OS X / Windows operating systems that's built atop Unigine's impressive game engine with first-class Linux support.

I spend a lot of time on airplanes. It used to be you'd often strike up a conversation with the person next to you on a plane. Over the years I met the editor of a newspaper in Roswell, New Mexico (and, yes, he was human as far as I could tell), an LA Laker Girl (no kidding), and many other interesting characters. But these days, you don't get much chance to visit with your flying neighbors because everyone has an iPod, or a laptop, or some other gadget to keep them busy.

The business office is where the Linux desktop should reign. Why? Linux is a reliable, stable, secure solution that would have any business user working day-in and day-out without fail. With an unheard of resistance to viruses, trojans, and worms, the office user enjoying the Linux desktop would have no concerns about down time as does the average Windows user. But what tools are there available for the usual office worker? Plenty!

On a security mailing list over the weekend, an unknown party published details about the structure and content of databases on the website of database vendor MySQL. The information was apparently accessible via a security hole on the MySQL.com website.

James Gosling, the father of Java, has joined Google – despite his previous criticism of the company's Java-happy Android operating system. Gosling announced his new job with a post to his personal blog entitled "Next step on the road", but did not provide specifics. "Through some odd twists in the road over the past year, and a tardis encountered along the way, I find myself starting employment at Google today. One of the toughest things about life is making choices. I had a hard time saying 'no' to a bunch of other excellent possibilities. I find it odd that this time I’m taking the road more travelled by, but it looks like interesting fun with huge leverage," he wrote

Last week I introduced tmux, a handy "terminal multiplexer." This week, we'll take a look at basic tmux usage and configuration. To start tmux, just run tmux or tmux new-session if you're feeling verbose. Then you'll have a session with one window and your usual login shell. To add a second window, run Ctrl-b c. (Same thing if you want a third, fourth, and so on.)