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When you think about it, it's surprising how many programming tasks don't require the use of floating point numbers. If you're an embedded systems programmer, you'd probably get fired for using "double" in a C program. If you write PHP or JavaScript, quick, do they even support floating point? One language that doesn't support it is Bash, but let's not let that stop us.

KDE 4.1 is finally out today, as you probably already know, and it comes with a lot of innovations for the Linux desktop. KDE 4 is the next generation of the popular K Desktop Environment, which seeks to fulfill the need for a powerful yet easy-to-use desktop, for both personal and enterprise computing. The new version provides increased stability over the first KDE 4 version and more eye candy! So, if you don't want to download an openSUSE-based KDE 4.1 Live CD or to wait until a stable distribution is released with KDE 4.1.0 as the default desktop, we will teach you how to install it on your existing Ubuntu 8.04 or 8.04.1 LTS desktop.

Calculating subnets is an essential skill for network administrators, and even home users with small LANs will benefit from understanding how they work. This installment of Networking 101 offers some tips and practice exercises to get you started.

Classmate ain't the XO laptopThis morning, AP bring us news thatPortugal pledged 500,000 Classmate PC's for elementary school students, the largest order for Intel's4P Computing offering to date.Sadly, I think this is an epic error on the part of the Government of Portugal, for three reasons..

Not too long ago, Marc Fleury went public with his newest venture, an open source home automation "project" (not yet officially a company) called OpenRemote. Marc describes it as "an open community in the Home Automation or Domotics space", that "promote[s] open standards, open collaboration, and open implementations in the field."

It's small and silent, sports an array of ports on the back but only one tiny white LED on the front, and it can help you spend hours of time in front of your TV -- and it runs Linux. It's the Netflix Player from embedded device specialist Roku, and we got our hands on it for a review of the service and the hardware. Netflix began delivering on-demand video in January 2007, restricting viewers to watching content through Internet Explorer on Windows. The "Watch Instantly" option uses DRM-encumbered Windows Media Video to lock out all non-Windows Media Player plug-ins (including licensed media players such as Fluendo's WMV codecs). The in-browser player includes minimal playback controls, and the service is built-in to all existing Netflix accounts. Subscribers on plans that include a fixed number of discs per month are alloted a fixed number of hours through the Watch Instantly service; subscribers on unlimited disc plans can watch an unlimited number of Watch Instantly programs.

In an interview with ZDNet Asia, Oliver Bell, Microsoft Asia-Pacific's regional technology officer, said the company has been focusing on building developer tools for server side applications. He cited two examples of such tools. The first one called OpenXML PowerTools allows the OOXML documents to be created and modified without needing Microsoft Office installed. The other tool, OpenXML SDK, offers a kit to help developers create third-party applications that read and write OOXML documents.

Should managed service providers start adding Linux-type devices to their hardware as a service (HaaS) strategy? Before you answer, consider some key observations and Ubuntu trends at Canonical. Here's the scoop from MSPmentor.

The first beta for Mandriva Linux 2009, code named thornicrofti, is now available. There is information about the new release in various places:

As we approach next weekâ??s LinuxWorld Expo, The VAR Guy was reminded of an age-old problem: Many VARs don't know how to profit from open source. Here are eight options to solve that problem, reports The VAR Guy.

Yahoo, HP and Intel are collaborating on an ambitious research endeavor called"Cloud Computing Test Bed" -- designed to support cloud computing research and education at universities. Users will be able to develop and test software, data center management, and hardware associated with cloud computing on this large-scale grid.

Intel's low-cost laptop initiative is set to get a boost Wednesday from Portugal's government, which is pledging to provide elementary school students with 500,000 computers based on the chipmaker's Classmate PC design. The announcement brings Intel's rivalry with the One Laptop Per Child organization into the spotlight once again.

The KDE development community announced today the official release of version 4.1, the first major update of the new 4.x series. This release finally delivers on the promise of a next-generation desktop environment and resolves most of the problems that afflicted the original 4.0 release. The new version includes a huge number of interface enhancements, application improvements, bug fixes, new software, and new infrastructure components; according to statistics released by the KDE developers, over 20,803 separate changes have been committed to the version control system since the 4.0 release.

PostPath is a drop-in Microsoft Exchange alternative based on the open source Postfix MTA. PostPath director of product management Sina Miri calls PostPath the "only" drop-in Exchange replacement, and he says that ability is the reason why his company makes PostPath available only with a proprietary license, despite its open source roots.

The next version Debian has come a step closer to completion with the freezing of the current testing distribution version codename Lenny. This will form the basis of Debian 5.0, expected in September. The freeze means that package developers who have not uploaded software for inclusion in the Debian 5.0 release have effectively missed the boat. It also means that their packages will almost certainly be omitted from the next versions of popular Linux distros such as Ubuntu, Xandros and Linspire that are based on Debian.

Solid state drives (SSD) have many advantages over traditional spinning-platter hard drives including no noise, low power and heat generation, good resistance to shock, and most importantly, extremely low seek times. To see just how much an SSD might improve performance, I used Bonnie++ to benchmark a contemporary SSD as it might be used in a laptop computer. Without going into details, SSDs may use single-level cell (SLC) or multi-level cell storage, with SLC drives typically offering better performance.

Mozilla continues to improve its flagship browser and the latest major release, Firefox® 3.0, offers something for just about everyone. XML developers were certainly not left out—the new version improves basic parsing, DOM, XSLT, SVG, and more. In this article, learn of the new features Firefox 3.0 offers for XML processing; pay close attention to how the added EXSLT extensions open up fresh possibilities for XSLT on the browser.

Not too long ago, I reviewed The Official Ubuntu Book, Third Edition published by Prentice Hall (July 13, 2008). The thing about reviewing a later edition of an already successful book, is that you need to make sure it updates to the current version of whatever it's describing, which in this case is Ubuntu 8.04, the Hardy Heron. I dinged the Benjamin Mako Hill, et al. book, primarily because it didn't address readers who were already dedicated Ubuntu users and who needed to know the ins and outs of upgrading vs. doing a clean install. I've since learned (and it wasn't addressed in the Prentice Hall book) that there actually is a direct upgrade patch from 6.06 to 8.04 (and this information was a little hard to come by). I needed that information, because performing that upgrade was the task I needed to perform. Rickford Grant's third edition book arrived at my home yesterday. How will this book appeal to the complete Ubuntu newbie vs. the experienced "non-geek" with upgrade needs?

The obvious thought came to me while writing last week's column ("SCO Group: Its future is all used up") that about the only folk (other than the deluded and amoral management of the SCO Group) that want the SCO Group effort attacking Linux and other open source initiatives to succeed is Microsoft. So I decided to explore that side in this follow-up column, but a bit of reading led me to the conclusion that things are not as simple as they appear.

Although not actually available until September in the UK, ASUS has announced the full specification of its new Eee Box. Everyone and their Auntie seems to be spinning cartwheels over the Eee PC, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that there is a little surge of nervous energy running through my fingertips as I write about the UK launch of the new Eee Box.