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Forget about the art, what really matters is why some tree roots buried in the ground accurately represent Fedora 10.

TrueCrypt is a free opensource software system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data are automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded or saved, without any user intervention. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys. Entire file system is encrypted (e.g., file names, folder names, contents of every file, free space, meta data, etc).

It would seem, that unless you are not actively involved in the current world (perhaps you are busy studying the galaxy or wondering whether that really is water on Mars), you might have heard something about going green.

Mozilla has launched a prototype messaging Firefox extension that it says could eventually enable users to keep track of all of their electronic communications, including e-mail, RSS, social networks and Web discussions.

When the long-awaited Gentoo 2008.0 release finally hit mirrors last month, the two largest groups of users found themselves out of luck: x86 users discovered that their live CD wouldn't copy the kernel during install, and the AMD64 image wouldn't fit onto a standard CD-ROM. This was not a great start for a distribution whose comeback may rest upon this release. Updated ISOs were released two days later, though, and those work well for getting a quick Gentoo install ready to customize.

In a move that benefits kids, schools and the environment, Untangle and its partners installed Ubuntu Linux on 750 refurbished PCs during LinuxWorld Expo. Here are some key benefits from the Installfest, according to The VAR Guy.

[I helped out with that for several hours on Tuesday and Wednesday, it felt good to know that I was helping to get useful computers to kids who would otherwise not have one at all. I went 0 for 4 on getting Linux installed on Dell machines though - Scott]

Columbus, Ohio – The Linux community continues to move in new and diverse directions while building a successful momentum each new year. Credit for some of that momentum goes to those community members that advocate about and to the community. Ohio LinuxFest is proud to recognize two such community members by announcing Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier and Jono Bacon as keynote speakers for this year's Ohio LinuxFest occurring October 10th - 11th.

As some of you might know, I opened the European ZaReason store this year. ZaReason is a company which is well known in the free software world, at least in the US, because it builds machines and sells them pre-installed with Ubuntu Linux. Now, at LinuxWorld Expo, the Alternageek video-interviewed Earl Malmrose, CTO of ZaReason, Inc.

Ubuntu is well known in user circles as the cool kids' Linux. It's available pre-installed on PCs and laptops from Dell and from numerous smaller computer vendors. What Ubuntu hasn't been known as is a Linux distribution that matters to CIOs and IT managers. Things are changing. Canonical, Ubuntu's parent company, is finally taking serious action on its long-announced plans to become a serious enterprise Linux player. The Isle of Man-based Linux distributor isn't just targeting data center servers, although that's on its list.

"So it's been a week since -rc1, and -rc2 is out there," began Linux creator Linus Torvalds,announcing the 2.6.27-rc2 Linux kernel. He noted,"there's a lot of random changes in there, and I'm hoping we're starting to calm down. The shortlog is still a tad too big to make it on the list (again, as usual - normally I end up posting shortlogs for -rc3 and later when they become more manageable) but let me just say that it isn't really all that interesting. Theres' a lot of small changes here, but nothing that makes you go'Wow!'. Not that there _should_ be anything like that in -rc2, of course, so I'm not complaining."

This guide explains how you can use mod_mysql_vhost to create simple virtual hosts on a lighttpd web server on Debian Etch. With mod_mysql_vhost, lighttpd can read the vhost configuration from a MySQL database. Currently, you can store the domain and the document root in the MySQL database which results in very simple virtual hosts. If you need more directives for your vhosts, you would have to configure them in the global section of lighttpd.conf, which means they would be valid for all vhosts. Therefore, mod_mysql_vhost is ideal if your vhosts differ only in the domain and document root.

Yesterday I discussed Beagle and Tracker with regards to their preferences settings, the time to index a collection of both HTML and PDF files, and how to extract information from individual files. In this article I'll go over the interfaces used to submit queries and the syntax used for complex queries for both projects.

News earlier this week that IBM is buying French business rules player Ilog for $340m has once again shone a spotlight on this relative backwater of enterprise technology. While business process management systems have managed to move into the mainstream, some of the business rules companies have remained in something of a niche. But what are the options in open source business rules management systems, and why would you want one?

Embedded designer Paul Thomas is showcasing a tiny, open-sourced computer at LinuxWorld in San Francisco this week. Would-be "Linuxstamp" enthusiasts can obtain pre-built boards for the hefty sum of $120 directly from Thomas, or they can download the design for free and build it themselves. The Linuxstamp is an extremely simple hardware design, consisting of six integrated circuits (processor, flash, RAM, serial-to-USB, ethernet PHY, and power conversion) plus a bunch of passives.

"Stop copying 2001 Windows. That's not where the usability action is," Sutor said during his afternoon keynote....Sutor said he believed the many open source licenses, as well as the many software standards bodies, that exist today, would eventually dwindle to only a few. As it is now, five or six open source licenses cover more than 90% of the available software today. On the standards front, IBM planned to work hard toward reform over the next 10 years, believing only five or six bodies are enough to approve technology standards. “We've got to get rid of this,” Sutor said of the current labyrinth of standards and the bodies that approve them.

The latest release of Barry Kauler's Puppy Linux version 4.0has a lot to bark about. Installed directly on a hard drive, it lacks some of the bells and whistles found in more popular Linux desktop versions. But run it from a USB drive in RAM, and Puppy growls impressively. The ability to carry an entire operating system on a flash drive and run it with all my files and settings intact is a powerful lure.

Back in June we were first to deliver Radeon HD 4850 benchmarks on Linux just after the new high-end ATI/AMD GPUs were launched. We were also successful in using the Radeon HD 4850 with an open-source driver and had exclusively shared that CrossFire support is coming to Linux along with a horde of other improvements. These new Linux features are coming soon, but today we are looking at a new Radeon HD 4850 graphics card from Sapphire Technology. The Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 Toxic 512MB ships with a performance-oriented Zalman cooler and it also comes factory overclocked.

"Over the last months there were repeating news about the murder on Nina Reiser by her husband Hans Reiser, known in the community for his work on his filesystems ReiserFS and Reiser4." "What I want to deal with here are the consequences of this "story" that may be in store for Reiser's filesystems."

Proper version control is a must for everyone who programs more than a few lines of code, but keeping your web applications or websites under version control is a tad harder that regular programs for two reason: You need a webserver to get your application going and you usually have to manage database revisions as well. Keeping database revisions in sync with your code revisions is a complex subject that I will leave until another time. In this article I will show you how to configure Apache on your development server so that it picks up your checked out working copies automagically as separate subdomains. Then that I will show you how to use dnsmasq so you can achieve the same effect on your local development machine.

I have written on other occasions, you can learn more seeing errors others commit, whatever their cause, which can be more instructive than simply spelling out how to do it correctly. It simply might be the relief of not finding oneself trapped in the same predicament that makes the lesson more likely to stick. This time it was the try / catch code syntax that trapped me. It seemed too transparent and too easily understood, which resulted in my missing a critical aspect. That is today's topic of discussion.