Showing all newswire headlines

The long awaited Zenwalk 5.2 is now available. In the 4 months since the last release many enhancements have been made. The Zenwalk GNU/Linux OS brings to its users both the latest stable software, a well polished Desktop and an ever-increasing software repository.

Simple Perl Script To Do Mass Emailing From Lists Running Any Mail Agent On Linux Or Unix.

GetDeb is an interesting project. It's a collection of packages that are compatible with Ubuntu but not yet in the official Ubuntu repositories.

Some people imagine that they could write a novel if only they had the right tool. StorYBook aims to be that tool, but falls short. The problem is not that StorYBook is poorly organized, or that its timeline and reports don't come in handy. Rather, the problem is that StorYBook has such a rigid structure that it is likely to fit only a minority of writers' plotting needs. For others, living with the rigidity and searching for ways around it is only likely to distract from planning and make it a chore rather than a creative thrill.

Last month, on the official Android discussion group, David "Lefty" Schlesinger posted a message that questioned the open sourciness of Google's fledgling mobile platform. And he was promptly muzzled by Google developer advocate Dan Morrill. "Now I'm moderated," says Lefty, an open source guru with Access, the Japan-based mobile software outfit. "I can't post anything unless Google approves it first." Granted, it wasn't the most diplomatic of messages. It actually quoted from The Reg. And Lefty had been floating such notes for quite awhile. In the end, he was probably muzzled for reasons that extend beyond his views on software development. But his story is still a nice metaphor for Google's relationship with certain parts of the open source community.

Ultimate Edition (UE) 1.8 is a remaster of Ubuntu Hardy Heron with custom software repositories and a distinctive theme. Its claim to fame over pure Ubuntu is convenience, due to preloaded updates and software. While the name might suggest that it is a huge upgrade over its progenitor, in reality its developers have not made many improvements besides application install scripts. Due to a distracting theme, a poorly built user interface, and an incredible lack of the convenience it claims to have, Ultimate Edition falls painfully short of ultimate.

The open source World Wind Java (WWJ) SDK by NASA creates new possibilities for the open Geographic Information Systems (GIS) community. This article explains how GIS developers who want to enhance their Eclipse-based applications can embed the WWJ SDK as an Eclipse plug-in.

Both of the big powerhouses in the digital SLR camera market -- Canon and Nikon -- make software with which you can control your camera from your PC through an attached USB cable. It is a nice tool for situations when manually triggering the shutter might cause shake (such as long exposures), or for automating multiple shots at timed intervals. But, naturally, the camera makers don't supply this software for free operating systems -- and just as naturally, the open source world has an answer. You can perform the same remote operation functions using gPhoto.

This isn't the sort of book I usually review. I don't know if you can say it has much to do with the computing industry, but it is on a topic that we all have in common (hopefully). I don't always consider myself the brightest bulb in the ceiling, so when I saw this book was available and read the subtitle, "How to get the most from your mind", I couldn't resist and asked for a review copy. Here's how it goes. One of the first things I do when I get a book for review, is to take a look at the back cover. The material there usually offers a nice summary of the content contained therein. I didn't find this back cover blurb to be particularly helpful. It seemed too "general", saying in part, "One part science guide, one part self-help concierge...grounded in...neuroscience, psychology, and nutritional wisdom..." I have a bachelor's degree in Psychology and a master's in Counseling, so I have something of the necessary background to review the material, but a neuroscientist, I'm not. What's the average reader going to make of it?

Last week I sent out the latest issue of Standards Today, my bi-monthly eJournal of "News, Ideas and Analysis." This time around, my topic is what I call "The Open Collaboration Revolution," by which I mean the unprecedented ways in which the Internet and the Web are allowing communities to form around projects of all types. The benefits that can be enjoyed as a result of such collaboration are leading those involved to reevaluate the traditional rights of creators and content owners.

The fundamental goal of any given Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) processing framework is to deliver an incoming SOAP message to the target application. However, if we consider today's Web Services or any other application, just delivering the message to the application is not sufficient. We need to provide quality of service, such as reliability and security. To provide these features, most SOAP processing frameworks have the concept of pipes, where, any incoming or outgoing message goes through the pipe, and the pipe gets divided into smaller pieces. Each piece is known as an interceptor. "Handler" is the Apache terminology for "message interceptor".

Late last month AMD had announced the release of the Stream SDK for Linux. This Stream SDK brings support for the CAL and Brook+ libraries on Linux. The version released was Stream SDK 1.1 Beta, which arrived at the same time as the SDK for Windows XP. With this new Linux support, we ran a small Q&A session with Michael Chu, who serves as the product manager for AMD Stream software. In this article are AMD's answers to some of the questions asked by members of the Phoronix Forums.

When the need arises to send email from the command line, many folks first think of the mail(1) command. A better choice might be the email program, which gives you the ability to send email to an SMTP server over SSL, offers MIME support including ability to attach one or more files to your emails, uses an address book to store your recipients, and lets you digitally sign and encrypt your messages.

Hey! You! Are you sick of letting the big hardware companies, tech blogs, and mainstream media decide which open source projects deserve widespread attention? So are we. That's why we created the SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards, and we need your nominations!

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install XEN on an Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) Server System (amd64) without compromising on disk I/O and network throughput. You can find all the software used here in the Ubuntu repositories, so no external files or source compilation are required.

Which parameters make software applications high-quality? And which parameters or methods, while desirable, are not directly "quality"? This article, inspired by someone else's post, aims to answer this question.

A new robot is in the works that will be able to "print off" various objects and devices, including duplicates of itself! Because of this, the designs will be freely available.

Taking a look at variable scope, pipes and while-loops in various Linux and Unix shells.

If Google really wanted to deliver a knockout punch to Microsoft, it would integrate OpenOffice with Google Docs, and sell support for the combined suite to small businesses, medium-sized business, and large corporations. Given the reach of Google, the quality of OpenOffice, and the lure of free, it's a sure winner.

Pentaho Corp., the commercial open source alternative for business intelligence (BI), today announced that its current version 2 alpha release of the Pentaho BI Platform, as well as future versions, will be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2). GPLv2 is a software license published by the Free Software Foundation. Pentaho will also provide a “FLOSS Exception”, which simplifies distribution of Pentaho BI Platform with certain other open source licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative (www.opensource.org). The Pentaho BI Platform is the underlying infrastructure that provides integration of Pentaho’s reporting, analysis, dashboard, data integration, and data mining capabilities into the Pentaho Open BI Suite.