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"An ongoing study on datasets of several Petabytes have shown that there can be 'silent data corruption' at rates much larger than one might naively expect from the expected error rates in RAID arrays and the expected probability of single bit uncorrected errors in hard disks, began a recent query on the Linux kernel mailing list asking where the errors might be introduced. Alan Cox replied, "its almost entirely device specific at every level. He then continued on with some general information, tracing the path of the data from the drive, through the cable and bus, into main memory and the CPU cache, as well as over the network, "once its crossing the PCI bus and main memory and CPU cache its entirely down to the system you are running what is protected and how much. Note that a lot of systems won't report ECC errors unless you ask."

Here's a series of well written IBM Linux tutorials to help you learn Linux fundamentals and prepare for system administrator certification. These are considered the most popular free online preparation methods cited by LPI exam candidates.

P.J. does an incredible job of research and decoding to human speak, drawing an inescapable conclusion that DRM itself is unconstitutional and violates copyright laws. Something we can all cheer about.

Filezilla is probably the most popular cross-platform FTP client around. Blue GNU caught up with Tim Kosse in the wake of the recent 3.0 release to take stock of this handy utility.

Volume management is not new to systems such as AIX and UNIX, and logical volume management (LVM) has been around since Linux kernel 2.4v1 and 2.6.9v2. This article reveals the most useful features of the LVM2 tool, such as how to build and manage volumes, snapshot a backup, and ways to simplify your system administration tasks.

Today we’re proud to introduce a new feature: Creative Commons Artist Spotlight, which Red Hat Magazine will be producing in association with jamendo.com. Every week, we will introduce our readers to emerging musical artists who choose to release their work under Creative Commons licenses. This week’s band, Convey, hails from Acton, Massachusetts. Their debut EP can be found at jamendo.com.

If you expect me to argue with the 13 reasons Kim Brebach gives for why the Linux desktop is unlikely to make it to a desktop near you any time soon, prepare to be disappointed. He's right. No, you didn't mis-read that. Brebach may be a Linux newbie -- well a newbie who's getting up to speed at a remarkable rate -- but he hit the nail right on the head with his 13 reasons for why the Linux desktop isn't likely to make it. But, what he doesn't do is look at some of the reasons why Linux may yet become a popular desktop despite itself.

Having recently rediscovered itself as a systems company, Sun Microsystems has been welcomed into Microsoft's vast and growing family of OEM partners. Expanding the companies' three-year-old interoperability pact, Sun has agreed to ship Microsoft's dated but important Windows Server 2003 operating system pre-installed on its x64 machines. The companies will also co-operate on go-to-market activities for the machines. Also notable: the deal does not stretch to Microsoft's planned Windows Server 2003 replacement - Windows Server 2008 - meaning Sun will be shipping an operating system that's several years old.

Hothead Games will soon be launching a new title based on the popular online Penny Arcade comic strip. Even better, the new game will be available for several platforms at its launch, including Linux. The dearth of new, popular, commercial games for Linux has long been a sore point for Linux users. For the most part, Linux gamers have been overlooked, forgotten, or ignored. What drove Hothead to include Linux as a supported platform? Joel DeYoung, Hothead Game's COO and also a founder and producer of the upcoming "Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness," said, "At Hothead we have a philosophy that gamers should choose the platform they want to play a game on, rather than the publisher dictating that to them. So in general we're always going to try to get our titles on as many platforms as possible.

One of the recent posts that Jonathan made was in response to a flame by Linus. In his response to accusations, by Linus, that Sun was being disingenuous about truly open sourcing its ZFS file system, he mentioned that not only was Sun going to open source everything, but that they were going to do it under GPL3.

Microsoft proclaimed in 2002 that the "era of 'open computing...'" was "...coming to an end". Just like their proclamations about the Internet 'fad', they could not have been more wrong...

Developers looking to build Ajax-style rich internet applications (RIA) are pretty much spoilt for choice at the moment. There are dozens of RIA tools and frameworks littering the development landscape, from those providing minimal sets of JavaScript libraries to heavyweight contenders such as Adobe’s Flex, Microsoft’s Silverlight and Google’s Web Toolkit (GWT). The Google offering, released under an Open Source licence, has quickly picked up a following by combining a wide range of useful and functional browser widgets and by using Java to drive the whole thing. Yep, that’s Java, not Javascript…

Learn how to use the new features of DB2 Express-C to store, query, and manipulate native XML documents using SQL/XML and XQuery. Create a new database, create a table with XML and relational columns, populate the table, and query XML data with XQuery.

This guest column by Kim Brebach, a consultant with an Australian technology marketing group, examines the Linux phenomenon from the perspective of a marketeer wondering why it hasn't caught on more, and what it would take to move it forward.

I can't believe I've never heard of Slackbuilds.org. It's a great way to get the software you want on your Slackware box.

While I definitely think some elements of Vista are definite improvements, 10 months of experience has shown me there are some things that just annoy me to my very core. Here are the three things that most make me wish I had the strength to move over to Linux — full time.

Not too long ago, open source meant starving developers; scant documentation; an ugly, outdated Web site; and software that lived in perpetual beta. Now open source software is becoming big business. “Now hiring” is a common sight on project home pages, and .org and SourceForge sites that used to point straight to source code archives are redirected to .com URLs that celebrate the commercial success of what started out as collaborations among unpaid coders of like mind.

The big names in open source enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, such as Compiere, get most of the publicity, but you have another choice: Nseer ERP, from the first Chinese company to open the source code to its ERP software. It offers a basic solution for small businesses. Like many other open source ERP applications, Nseer ERP is developed under Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and is based on a client-server architecture. It runs on Linux, Windows, and Unix, and supports databases such as MySQL, Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server; multiple languages (for the time being, only English and Chinese); and the IE, Firefox, and Netscape Web browsers. The latest version is v6.0.

Chris Bailey, UK ICT Hub FOSS in the VCS project, writes: As part of the work for the UK ICT Hub's FOSS in the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) project we are developing a new certification for FOSS use by not for profits, Free and Open Source Knowledge (FOSK). We are doing this in partnership with the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) whose certification for Linux system administrators has world wide recognition.

This week on Open News OOXML Fast-track Rejected, NetApp Sues Sun, and An Interview With Jono Bacon.