Showing all newswire headlines

Bash's possible network security risk no longer comes standard. Before we get started today, I just wanted to reflect on our posts' introductions. Usually it's "Hey there," or something to that effect. Being one of those people who are bothered by redundancy (at least, after the 50th time ;) this is the one part of blog posting I find the most grating.

I spent some time talking with an Accenture veteran this morning, and came away with an intriguing idea: enable open-source projects to provide corporate benefits like health insurance to their developers so that they can ditch their day jobs to focus on their open-source passion. If you've ever started a small business, you know that getting "enterprise-grade" benefits like health insurance is very difficult. At Alfresco, for example, we ultimately joined a PEO (Professional Employer Organization) called Trinet [PDF], which aggregates many smaller companies to negotiate insurance plans with companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield that would normally not consider providing small companies insurance.

No religious wars here--just the cold, hard, dollars and cents facts. No, this isn't another rant about how you should convert to Linux because it's free, although it is free. Free is a four-letter word among those who scoff at the mere mention of Linux. Yes, Linux is free, but that doesn't give it an unfair advantage on the desktop because most computers arrive preloaded with Windows — so to the buyer it appears Windows is also free.

Hoping to bolster its position in the Web-based content management system market, Plain Black has rolled out a spruced-up version of its flagship product that makes it easier to maintain Web content and features a new point-of-sale cash register. The point-of-sale capability added to the 7.6 version of WebGUI now lets authorized users work with a virtual cash register. The new feature was added to make it easier for companies at remote events such as trade shows, for instance, to sell tickets and products directly to customers.

There was a time when it was enough for middleware to be just a Java J2EE application server stack. Times do change, though: J2EE is now called JavaEE, and middleware needs are more than just Java. To help meet the evolving requirements of the modern enterprise, Sun this week released its Glassfish Portfolio, which provides a JavaEE application server as well as an AMP (Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack, along with portal software and management tools.

The GUI released by HP for its Mini Mi netbook has been winning accolades for its high design standards. The interface offers pleasing shiny black eye candy that some sites are comparing to Apple design. The GUI provides an integrated starting point for many day-to-day tasks. You can search the web, visit your favorite bookmarks, and navigate through your applications (sorted by categories like Media, Work, and Play), all in a friendly task-oriented GUI. DownloadSquad writes that HP MediaStyle application looks a lot like Apple's FrontRow.

The GroundWork Open Source company out of San Francisco CA has released its Nagios-based monitoring software in a new version 5.3, including a free Community Edition.

A recent article from the popular weblog Techdirt condems Mozilla for siding with EU, because the success of Firefox proves that there is no monopoly. But is this really the case or did Firefox succeed despite the anti-competitive business practices of Microsoft? Does MS deserve to go unpunished even though they played unfair?

The world's biggest software maker has warned companies to expect an increase in "insider" security attacks by disgruntled, laid-off workers. Microsoft said so-called "malicious insider" breaches are on the rise and will worsen in the present downturn. "With 1.5 million predicted job losses in the US alone, there's an increased risk and exposure to these attacks," said Microsoft's Doug Leland.

Create and manage multiple shells on your console with GNU Screen. The command line is a powerful tool, but it has a fatal weakness: If the shell perishes, so does your work. To keep your shell and your work alive—even across multiple sessions and dropped connections—use GNU Screen, a windowing system for your console.

OSI Board member Alolita Sharma gives a status update of the adoption of open source in India.

One of the many problems with the patent offices around the world is that they are often unaware of prior art, granting patents for so-called inventions that are, in fact, common knowledge. In the computer world, there have been a number of efforts to provide prior art to patent offices, either after a patent is granted, in order to have it rescinded, or – even better – as part of the examination process. That's fine for a community with easy access to online source materials, but what about other fields, where prior art exists in other forms like books, or perhaps orally?

GroundWork Monitor has been updated to version 5.3 with improvements to key areas. The network management software from GroundWork is available as a free Community Edition, as well as two commercial versions, GroundWork Monitor Professional and GroundWork Monitor Enterprise. The new release includes version 3.06 of the Nagios monitoring tools. Updated components include MySQL, RRDTool, PHP and the reporting tool BRIT. Installation has been simplified for new Linux servers, as all prerequisites are now included in a single package.

The BBC is more often in the news for hassling others over the misuse of BBC copyrighted material on the web. Imagine our surprise when we learned that the BBC was on the other end of the copyright infringement stick for a change.

Tech vendors who can't think of good things to say about their products fall back on "It's Green! Save Money And Be Hip!" But as always, Open Source is ahead of the curve. Tina Gasperson examines how Open Source software uses innovative methods such as less clothing, fewer showers, and agoraphobia to generate substantial energy savings.

Over the last weekend, the Plasma team held their second meeting in Porto, Portugal. The meeting was organised by Akademy Award winner Nuno Pinheiro inviting the Akademy Award-winning Plasma team to his home country. The meeting was kindly hosted by the Departamento de Engenharia Informatica (Department of Computer Sciences) of the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto. The Plasma team (and most probably many of the KDE users) are grateful for being provided this opportunity to collaborate on the desktop.

Back in September we reviewed the Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 graphics card that offered 512MB of GDDR3 memory. Overall, this RV730-based graphics card had performed well under Linux and not a bad investment with it retailing for about $80 USD. Sapphire Technology though has now introduced a new version of the Radeon HD 4670 that sports 512MB of GDDR4 memory. Will switching out the GDDR3 for GDDR4 memory have much of an overall impact on this graphics card? We have the results in this article.

Choosing to release a piece of software under the terms of a free software license is an important step through which many programmers and writers first approach the free software community. However, the myriad of licenses available can sometimes confuse and disorient the user, sometimes making this first step much harder than it should be. Let’s try and make things clearer.

Cuba launched its own variant of the Linux computer operating system this week in the latest front of the communist island's battle against what it views as U.S. hegemony. The Cuban variant, called Nova, was introduced at a Havana computer conference on "technological sovereignty" and is central to the Cuban government's desire to replace the Microsoft software running most of the island's computers.

In the past I was trying many different linux distros. Each has its own package management systems: debian has apt, mandrake has urpmi, yellowdog has an apt front-end for rpm, suse has yast... While they all are quite similar and not difficult to use, I found that I often made mistakes because I often forgot which system I was using and the exact commands on that system. Another issue is that I wish I could keep track how I installed/removed those packages. So I wrote a simple wrapper for various package management systems.