Showing all newswire headlines

I have cron-apt set up on all my machines — you can get it to install any updates automatically but that sounds like Bad News to me, so instead it’s set to download and email me. I had a script that took names-of-machines-to-upgrade as arguments and did the rest for me, but that involved typing up to 50 machine names. And I am lazy. So I finally got around to writing a script that parses a local mailbox, grabs the machine names from the subject lines, and does the rest from there.

A visitor of this site, who goes by the name “Finland Calling”, has just dropped us a helpful tip. Quick translation of the text from “The Finnish News Agency” aka STT going rounds in web already and being published in all of the major and also most of the minor newspapers tomorrow: "In the meeting between prime minister of Finland Matti Vanhanen and Bill Gates, the software giant Microsoft promised to donate tailored tools for Finnish schools. Microsoft will offer Finnish basic education and general upper secondary schools and their students free Windows live services selection."

Microsoft said Tuesday that it struck a patent cross-licensing deal with Japanese electronics manufacturer JVC that includes net payments from JVC to Microsoft. Under the deal, both companies will exchange patent information related to the development and manufacturing of consumer products. More specific terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Microsoft, however, did say that the deal's balance of payments tilts in its direction. "Microsoft is being compensated by JVC," Microsoft said in a statement. The statement has raised speculation that Microsoft may be charging JVC for its use of the Linux operating system in some of its products. Among other things, JVC uses Linux in its streaming video networking gear.

Yes, Gentoo has some issues concerning the Gentoo foundation. Yes, we are actively working on straightening out these issues. No, Gentoo is not dying. Developers are still coding, servers are still humming and moral among developers that I work with is high. The state of the foundation is not something that will stop the kernel team from releasing kernels, the KDE team from working their butts off so KDE 4 compiles on everyone’s machine, or the release team from creating and testing the forthcoming release.

I’ve largely stopped reporting bugs to Ubuntu because of the condescending and dismissive attitude from their developers. Today I stumbled across what unfortunately seems like another typical example of what happens when you report a bug to them: aumix in Ubuntu 7.10 was compiled wrong, such that it won’t even launch. Recompiling the source package without making any changes to the source fixes the problem. Instead of just doing that, the Ubuntu developers spent far more time and effort bickering on the bug report and justifying their inaction by referring to official protocol.

MEncoder has supported video encoding for a long time with the MPlayer Project and FFmpeg, which also now is part of MPlayer now. Transcode is a new command-line tool on the horizon for video and audio transformations. Transcode used to give me horrors, but it is much better now. It does take some time to learn its wonderfully unintuitive syntax—the author used all the lowercase and uppercase English alphabet letters for specifying the command-line options. Using longer mnemonic options common in other Linux commands might have made things easier. Anyway, let's get to the meat of the matter.

PackageKit aims to take the pain out of the package management on GNU/Linux systems and create a system that can compete with Windows and Mac. Development is proceeding at a rapid pace and it is set to be available in Fedora 9. To find out more, we talked to Richard Hughes, project creator, and Robin Norwood, the Fedora feature owner; as always, you can catch some screenshots at the end!

A North Dakota judge issued a ruling in Sierra Corporate Design v. Ritz that has some pretty stunning implications about the use of the "host -l" command when accessing DNS records. In the judgment (which was prepared by the plaintiff's counsel and sent to the judge), the use of the "host -l" command is tantamount to computer hijacking and hacking.

Open source support still worries Asian users, low-cost laptops took off against the odds, and India is still on top for outsourcing.

A team of engineering students at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. is designing a digital stethoscope based on uClinux. The team, called "Rhythm Reloaded," released a project proposal on the open source device, which runs Freescale's Coldfire MCF5275 CPU. The Rhythm Reloaded team is building the stethoscope as part of a senior design project. The team hopes its device will be the first electronic stethoscope able to record, filter, and store computer audio data from a medical patient.

After the filing of the Verizon / BusyBox suit, and after reading about any number of other, similar incidents where a company showed what could only be seen as flagrant disregard for the GPL, I had to ask myself: Why do people do this? Are companies really that naive about the GPL, or do they just think they can get away with anything? I've gone back and forth about this, and I've come to the conclusion that GPL violators, or "freeloaders," aren't all of one mind. There's more than one way for a given vendor to run afoul of the GPL, and I've tabulated three that seem to be the most common.

Due to patent concerns, we won't be able to include any games in Fedora which meet the following criteria: A game where "targets" move across the screen to a predetermined point or line, where the player hits a button/key/mouse click as the target(s) crosses that point or line, and gets points.

[Why does this stupid patent exist at all? It should have been laughed out of the PTO on first sight. - Sander]

KDE 4.0 was released last week and all hell seemed to break loose. What I view as a solid first step in a very positive reaction was met with some applause, but generally scorn and complaints. I think some perspective is needed, and I humbly offer to try and provide some. I’d like to take issue with some things I see that are just plain wrong.

Join the discussion for a grassroots campaign to bring F/LOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) to government in the Province of Ontario. After Ontario, we’ll take on the other provinces, one by one, until we have a Free Canada. And then on to other countries...

As the Writers Guild of America's strike enters its fourth month, one of its key issues -- the sharing of profits from online distribution -- is encouraging the rise of new production companies that are exploring alternative methods of production and distribution. Along with Hollywood Disrupted and Founders Media Group, these new companies include Virtual Artists, whose goal is to bring free software developers and Hollywood writers together to experiment.

Yes, you read right, Microsoft will be represented at the next SLUG meeting. We've confirmed that Microsoft will be visiting SLUG on Friday 25 January. If you can't make it to the meeting, please post your questions at out wiki.

Anin-depth article on F/OSS EHR's including comparisons and contrasts of the front-runners has been published by California Healthcare Foundation:Open-source electronic health record (EHR) systems, have proliferated in recent years. This executive summary presents the findings from an evaluation designed to determine whether these systems, commonly referred to as free and open-source software (FOSS), are suitable as ambulatory EHRs.

The gPC has gotten a lot of attention, but it still has its flaws such as minimal hardware and a relatively untested Linux distribution. The new Linspire PC solves some of those flaws.

The first day of the KDE 4.0 Release Event in Mountain View, California, got off to a great start on Thursday, with attendees fuelled by a hearty breakfast provided by Google. Then, the "un-conference" was ready to get underway, and within minutes the first topics were added to the whiteboards. Meanwhile, the room filled with people from across North America and worldwide, all with an interest in KDE. Read on for more details.

The long awaited SimplyMEPIS 7.0 was finally released just before Christmas, and it was worth the wait. In this mature and sometimes underrated operating system, everything looks good and works well. Because I was familiar with previous MEPIS versions, the first thing I noticed in 7.0 was the lovely new artwork. The tasteful theme begins at the live CD boot screen and continues through the boot splash and login screen to the desktop.