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The ground rules Interview: TIBCO's Stefan Farestam talks with Reg Developer about the ground rules of SOA governance.

[Any interest in SOA governance around here? - dcparris]

Part 2: Runtime efficiency issues in Mac Cocoa programming: Last time round, we looked at the way an unnamed developer had used Cocoa routines to chop up a simple C-string in order to determine whether or not it contained a particular, named OpenGL extension name.

[Not necessarily GNU/Linux-related, but Cocoa and OpenGL may be of some interest to our audience. If not, go ahead and holler. We'll unpost it. - dcparris]

The always provocativeBrad Templeton, whohung out with a large cadre of geeks at the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW, orIIW2007) last week, has some cautions about new identity systems, even if they are all"user-centric". These cautions lie in a paradox:"The easier it is to give somebody ID information, the more often it will be done. Andthe easier it is to give ID information, the more palatable it is to ask for, or demand it." The italics are his.Here he hits on the problem of market power asymmetries (vendors strong, customers weak) that have been with us for the whole Industrial Age, and are with us still. I think we have a way to overcome those, and that Brad's Paradox may provide exactly the conceptual hurdle we need to see before we can make progress.So let's start with Brad's explanation:

Change Reflects the Company's Inherent Strengths and Sole Focus on Online Network of Properties

The Standards Council of Canada is seeking comments on a proposal to adopt Office Open XML (Open XML or OOXML) as an international standard. So far there are over 130 comments to this proposal and the message is clear. People don't want OOXML. They want a truly open standard that isn't controlled by only one company. People want OpenDocument Format (ODF).

In these days lot of good things for GNU/Linux are happening or about to happen. Is the future of GNU/Linux looking bright for the first time? What good stuff is arrived and what is coming?

Dell promotional video discussing Ubuntu Linux

The third release of Xubuntu, the variant of Ubuntu with the lightweight Xfce desktop, appeared last month. Feisty Fawn (version 7.04) uses the final gold code of Xfce 4.4.0 rather than the release candidates in Edgy Eft (version 6.10) and Dapper Drake (version 6.06). I had very positive experiences with both Edgy and Dapper so I had very high expectations for Xubuntu Feisty Fawn. In some ways the new release does take a step forward but in some truly important areas it took a couple of steps backwards and has been something of a disappointment.

In a recentlkml thread the concept of dumping an image of the kernel's memory to swap when the kernel hits a bug was discussed.

Learn how to construct and deconstruct a simple multicluster using the General Parallel File System (GPFS), and remotely add an existing GPFS cluster to another cluster. GPFS is the parallel file system from IBM for AIX 5L and Linux clusters made up of System x and System p computers.

The lead developer of the Hugin panorama-stitching application, Pablo d'Angelo, has proposed a new open database for collecting camera lens information that could be used to correct systematic distortion in photographs. The database would be populated by user-submitted calibration data and some data donated from a competitor, but the exact format and licensing of the database are still under consideration. One developer's suggestion would make proprietary software that uses the database pay for the privilege.

Redmond itself will be up against software patents in a few years, says Ubuntu founder who believes Microsoft's real threat is the same as everyone else's.

TrueCrypt is free software that encrypts data “on-the-fly”. You can create an encrypted hard drive, a separate partition or a directory with TrueCrypt. It doesn’t encrypt simply the content of files but their names and the names of the directories as well. Moreover there is no way to check the size of the encrypted volume. TrueCrypt is available for Windows and Linux. |

gFTP is a complete, easy-to-use file transfer tool for the Linux desktop. In spite of its name, gFTP can transfer files using more than standard File Transfer Protocol; it provides several features that make it more than just another FTP client.

Develop and deploy a sample application using the Spring MVC framework.

Elitegroup Computer Systems is known for their array of products from desktop computers to graphics cards and motherboards. At hand today we have their NF650iSLIT-A motherboard, which is powered by NVIDIA's nForce 650i Chipset and caters toward the computer enthusiast crowd, but can it really deliver?

Driving to your favorite beach only to find it covered with dead fish is no fun. Scientists at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, have eliminated the guessing game by using Linux and open source software to give surf seekers some cool online tools for picking the best beach.

"ANY rule which reduces your rights is unacceptable," explained Theo de Raadt [interview] in a brief discussion on theOpenBSD -misc mailing list,"especially when the full consequences of such a set of rules may be unclear -- which it always is." The comment was in response to a query about why Intel's firmware was considered non-free. Theo went on to explain:"Normal free software has no'contract law' issues, because it is simply given away under'copyright law with almost all author's rights revoked'. Contract law works differently, because it is based more on the principle of'you got something, now you have to give something back'. The minute you see a URL like that explaining things in such a way, you should realize that the addition of'rules' means you are in a different legal system."Copyright has no way to apply such rules, therefore [the Intel firmware] is not free."read more

The recent survey of Associate Professor Alan D. MacCormack proves again statistics are lies with his study "Developers Do Not Want GPL 3 to Police Patents". Still, eWeek found it important enough to mention. Knowing a thing or two about statistics and how to manipulate them, I thought let's see how well the professor does.

... it's just a subset of the overall Dell forum, but it has a Linux logo, complete with Tux (that's it above). And here's the Dell Linux Engineering Web Site, where the project's Wiki lives.