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When I began triaging the machines to get them ready for our kids, I ran across two of the Acers that had what seemed to be a bios password on them. Not a problem, either flash the bios or pull the battery for some amount of time and problem solved. Uh...no. Not here. Not for these. What I ran into was something that I have ranted about in the past to the point where I almost bored myself. Trusted Computing.

Dell takes the new 10" 2100 netbook out of its Latitude business series to target students, but it also serves as a mobile business device. Ubuntu 8.10 runs on it.

Now, some of you — free/open-source software enthusiasts — may have seen such posts back and forth between Bryan Lunduke — from “The Linux Action Show” — and the “Linux Hater” — from his lame blog (in his own words) — let me analyze this for a second.

Open source software (OSS) is not impenetrable, and will likely be an increasing target of hackers if it grows in adoption, said a security expert. Speaking at a briefing Wednesday, Rohit Dhamankar, director of security research, DVLabs at TippingPoint, said computer criminals tend to work for profit gain and will attack widely-deployed software to gain access to more terminals easily. But he noted that OSS is a harder target to attack, because of the speed at which bugs get patched. The visibility of code and mass participative nature of open source development helps bugs get discovered faster.

[You smell what I smell? - Scott]

The vast of amount of data being stored in this day and age, naturally leads to files sitting unused for longer and longer periods of time. A new app, agedu, can quickly tell you what data on your filesystem is lying fallow.

I had the chance to use a DAT device (an old HP SuperStore DAT24) to make copy on tapes. I didn't want to install any new software to manage that task. This guide can be considered a first step to know how the thing can work. Then, everybody can customize it according to the personal needs.

For those of you who are regular visitors, you may already know that before I started playing with GNU/Linux (2001/2) I was using FreeBSD. And while I continue to use GNU/Linux, I still hold an emotional tie to BSD-based operating systems. It was not until recently that I had decided to give the latest version of PC-BSD a try. This is version 7.1: Galileo Edition. A side note: PC-BSD is a desktop oriented version of FreeBSD intended to be extremely user friendly, primarily because of their implementation of their PBI package management system along with other features.

According to the New Media & Technology Law Blog, the FSF legal action against Cisco, filed in December 2008 has been settled. The case was brought against Cisco for distributing GPL licensed code while, according to the FSF, failing to comply with the requirement of making the code available in source form.

Learn how to use PHP directly from the command line on Linux, BSD, Mac OS X (running BSD) or some other flavor of UNIX

Last year the Wayland Display Server project was started by Kristian Høgsberg, a Red Hat developer and a name known well within the X.Org community for his work on AIGLX, Direct Rendering Infrastructure 2, and various other projects. We were first to talk about the Wayland Display Server in detail, which aims to provide a mini display server that is designed around the latest X/kernel technologies like the Graphics Execution Manager and kernel mode-setting. Wayland also integrates its own compositing manager and is designed to produce a perfect frame (a.k.a. no tearing) each and every time. There has not been much to report on this project recently, but we now have a status update courtesy of Kristian.

Ready or not, Slackware has now gone 64-bit with an official x86_64 port being maintained in-sync with the regular x86 -current branch. DVDs will be available for purchase from the Slackware store when Slackware 13.0 is released.

Open source is answering the call at government agencies on all levels as they look for opportunities to carve out costs and improve security, transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Why? Open source is stable, trustworthy, and secure, and Red Hat solutions are being used across government agencies to create efficiencies, eliminate vendor lock-in, meet mission-critical IT demands, and improve service delivery.

We first got excited for Moblin 2.0 back in January when seeing how fast this Linux distribution had booted on Atom-powered netbooks. This Fedora-derived distribution booted even faster with a newer development release that came out this past March. While Moblin 2.0 final is not yet released, there is now more to get excited over than just amazing boot times. Moblin 2.0 will introduce a Clutter-based user interface and from our initial encounters with this release, it is very impressive! In this article we have more information on this new UI along with screenshots and videos.

"Making the world’s knowledge computable" — Sounds like a job for parallel computing.

Part two of a quick-start guide to the recovering deleted data on Linux or Unix partitions. Focus on lazarus from TCT

Forgive The VAR Guy if he sounds like Yogi Berra today, but our resident blogger has deja vu all over again. The reason: The folks at OpenBI, a systems integrator in Chicago, have scored yet another win promoting Pentaho’s open source business intelligence software to customers. This is becoming a familiar story for OpenBI and Pentaho’s partner channel. Here’s the scoop.

Likewise announced today that its Likewise Enterprise offering will ship as part of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 from Novell. Likewise Enterprise securely connects computers running SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 with Microsoft Active Directory -- making it easy to authenticate users, control access to applications and data, centrally manage settings with group policies and create reports for regulatory audits.

The SA State IT Agency's Free and Open Source Programme Office (FPO) is to host a workshop this coming Friday in which free and open source software (FOSS) vendors will have a chance to demonstrate their products to government officials. The day-long workshop will include representatives from companies that were selected, in a 2005 tender process, as government-approved open source vendors.

I took a Computer Logic Design class in college, so when I stumbled upon the Ksimus Circuit Simulator, I was intrigued. At the risk of waxing nostalgic, I remember what it was like to build circuits in school. We'd spend hours the night before the lab designing our circuit, being careful to list each interconnection. We had to keep track of which pin numbers on each chip were to be connected.

A year ago, when a Time Magazine reporter told Tan Dailin that he'd been identified as someone who may have hacked the Pentagon, he gasped and asked, "Will the FBI send special agents out to arrest me?" The answer, it turns out, was, "No, the Chinese government will." Dailin, better known in Chinese hacker circles as Withered Rose, was reportedly picked up last month in Chengdu, China, by local authorities. He is now facing seven years in prison under a new Chinese cybercrime law that was passed in late February.