Showing all newswire headlines

High definition HTML is coming to a site near you -- whether you will see it is another matter. An addition to the HTML5 working draft specification was approved by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) working group over the weekend, including several new HTML elements and attributes designed to support output on high definition displays. But due to patent protection, open source Web browsers may not be allowed to implement a significant portion of the standard.

I'd love to run Linux. I'm ready for Linux. But Linux isn't quite ready for me. Or perhaps even you. But it's getting closer.

Please find the official results for the ISO vote for OOXML (DIS 29500) below. Probably the impact on the adoption of ODF of the OOXML process will be minimal, but surely there will be some interest from the public around this. OOXML which was submitted by Microsoft to ECMA, and by ECMA to ISO, has literally crawled through the needles eye.

[Empasize mine. Sadly not an april fool's joke - Sander]

RMS is known for his promotion of Free Software, or maybe more so for his disdain of non-Free, proprietary software. So it came as a surprise to many visitors to the GNU home page to see an announcement not asking for a call to arms against software patents or so-called DRM, but to say that he was getting married. What makes the news surprising? He found his soon-to-be wife by playing World of Warcraft.

This document describes how to set up Openbravo ERP (enterprise management system) on Debian Etch. Taken from the Openbravo page: "Openbravo is an open source ERP solution designed specifically for the SME (small to midsize firm). Developed in a web based environment, it includes many robust functionalities which are considered part of the extended ERP: procurement and warehouse management, project and service management, production management, and financial management."

Not only is this a good book to have if you want to learn JavaScript from the ground up, but it's a good book to have if you want to learn the basic principles of programming. Chapter 2, Programming with JavaScript alone is worth the price of admission. So many books seem to throw the reader directly into the JavaScript (or some other programming language), without describing how to do the basic steps of programming in that language. Chapter 2 is truly written for the beginner and takes the reader by the hand, showing them how to build a simple program from the ground up.

Intel's low-cost Atom processors will be at the core of inexpensive PCs. And inexpensive computers these days often come with Linux. How do PC companies shave off the last hundred dollars or so to get to $299 or in some cases $199? Easy. They swap out Windows (pricey) for Linux (free).

The LiMo Foundation released the first full version of its platform on Monday, as it welcomed a major new member on board. Chipmaker Texas Instruments (TI) will be joining its main rival ARM in LiMo, the largest mobile Linux consortium. TI, however, is joining at the "core member" level--a superior position to the "associate member" status enjoyed by ARM.

Canonical has just announced Ubuntu jabbering Jackass, the next version of Ubuntu. It will focus, among other things, on being highly stubborn -- I mean stable.

I recently picked up "Firefly, The Complete Series", and would like to enjoy viewing it on my newly recycled laptop. Placing a Firefly DVD in the drive, after a moment, the 'what do you want me to do with this?' window popped up. I pick play with Kaffeine, a short banner appears, and then Kaffeine dies, being unable to read the DVD. What to do?

This week saw the International Standards Organisation vote on adopting Office Open XML as a standard for office documents. KDE gained a representative late last year through our legal body KDE e.V. realising that the only way to ensure a fair process was to be part of it. Today our delegate voted yes to adopting the format as an international standard. "We have studied the standard hard and many changes have been made to it," said KDE's Supreme Leader Aaron Seigo "and following a $10,000 donation from an anonymous North American source we realised the market should decide the best formats to use, not technical bureaucrats".

[April Fools! - Scott]

I've already written most of my Ubuntu 8.04 beta review, which I'm holding onto for the time being. I don't usually run -- or review -- beta releases, but this time I'm making an exception because a) most Ubuntu releases are hotly anticipated and b) Ubuntu's second-ever long-term-support release is a huge deal for me as a big fan of releases that have lives longer than the standard six months to a year. I ran into a problem starting Friday. I couldn't get any updates from the Update Manager. I then ran Firefox and discovered that my networking was dead. I hadn't changed anything, but I couldn't even ping anything on the local network. I checked my static IP information in Network Settings. It all looked fine.

One of the things that most of us learn at our mother's knee is that you shouldn't rush things. If you do, you'll make silly mistakes. Mothers also tend to tell their children to play by the rules, but some apparently listen better than others to that advice as well. Current events continue to indicate that OOXML is a motherless child.

Improved usability and integration with other integrated development environments are the first features being called for inresponse to a request for feedback on the future Eclipse.…

Your moolah mired in Microsoft Money? Are you ready to quit Quicken? We've stumbled across GnuCash, personal and small-business financial-accounting software that's not only free but available on multiple platforms because of its GNU/Open Source pedigree. GnuCash has enough financial bells and whistles to compete with the best commercial packages.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Adobe Systems Incorporated is joining the Foundation. Adobe is joining the LF to collaborate on the advancement of Linux as a leading platform for rich Internet applications (RIA) and Web 2.0 technologies.

Linux has succeeded as a product only because the community that supports it has organised itself systematically to create, share, test, reject, and develop ideas in a way that flouts conventional wisdom. Successful We-Think projects are based on five key principles that were all present in Linux. Here are the first two.

The GNU/Linux Matters non-profit, which is dedicated to Internet Freedomware advocacy, has completed a full re-design of its translation system. Now, with new translations of GetGNULinux.org and increased linking, it wants to find 1,000,000 Windows visitors over the course of one year. There are many ways to participate.

An Information Week article published last week appears to position Microsoft as trying to do something right when it comes to open source. And it positions the open source community as being not quite ready to make nice after past insults, threats, and abuse. Speaking for myself, I am always ready to see what somebody has to say when they say they want to work with the open source community. Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to be continuing its campaign of defining open source on its own terms, terms that violate the basic principles of our community.

It’s no small secret. I hate Microsoft. I think they are the most vile and corrupt corporation in the tech industry. Their monopoly hampers innovation and they favor litigation, corruption and marketing tricks to maintain their position over simply creating great products. I have read and heard many people claim Microsoft is changing, improving, and the evil Microsoft of the pass is fading; I strongly disagree with this view, and it takes no more then a cursory look through Microsoft’s actions in 2007 to see why.