Showing all newswire headlines

Skype on Aug. 31 introduced a pair of cordless VoIP phones that work without being connected to a computer, via a DECT basestation that attaches directly to broadband and POTS lines. One of the two -- the Philips VOIP841 -- uses Linux as its embedded OS.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer has been the dominant Web browser (almost) since the birth of the Web. It runs on Microsoft's Windows and on Apple's Mac, but it has never been officially supported on Linux. A nascent open source effort called IEs 4 Linux is trying to change that. This week, the group released its latest version of IEs 4 Linux 2.01, which is more stable than its predecessors and fixes some bugs.

[This is mainly for testing websites. I have seen a number of comments from web developers who keep IE around for that purpose. - dcparris]

Any chance of an alpha look at the in-development, forthcoming, early 2007 release of Flash 9 for Linux turned to a very extinct omega, according to Adobe's Mike Melanson.

Wikis are growing in popularity and recognition-factor, and two recent releases from MindTouch -- DekiWiki and MindTouch Dream -- bring open source and development flexibility to small to medium-size business.

SPECviewperf measures the 3D graphics performance of systems running under the OpenGL application programming interface.

Developers have corrected a flaw in the SAP MaxDB database that could be targeted by hackers to execute arbitrary code. Researcher Oliver Karow of Symantec is credited with finding the database vulnerability. The flaw was fixed in the latest version of MaxDB 7.6.00.31.

Microsoft is working on closing a loophole that creates a means to strip usage restriction from music files wrapped in its DRM technology. A program called FairUse4WM, recently posted on the internet, allows users to bypass Microsoft's Digital Rights Management system.

Trusted Computer Solutions Inc. (TCS) has announced with IBM Corp. the launch of its SecureOffice suite of cross-domain guards running on Linux. The guards incorporate trusted functionality at the operating systems level, thus meeting U.S. Federal Agency requirements for secure information sharing, TCS of Herndon, Virginia said.

As Linux steps beyond the limits of technical applications, business intelligence (BI) is one area that's leading the way. In a rash of recent BI announcements at LinuxWorld and elsewhere, many vendors are developing new business models, while consciously giving customers a choice between Linux and other operating systems--and in some cases, between commercial and open source implementations, too.

You can implement a balance point between a PHP application that is too configurable and one that is too closed. Learn three techniques for creating user-editable configuration files that will keep end users from mucking around in your code and from making changes to your application's behavior.

KIVILCIM Hindistan recently migrated to a new laptop and promptly destroyed his partition table. Flailing around with false laziness taught him the true value of true laziness. Here's a real-life tale of Knoppix rescue and a cautionary tale about troubleshooting.

Mozilla released Beta 2 of its upcoming Firefox 2 browser for developer review Aug. 31, emphasizing that it is being made available for testing purposes only. The release contains a number of new features, as well as some enhancements to look and feel.

Brian Byun of VMware talks about the implications of the Microsoft-XenSource link-up for virtual computing.

As Debian's tcl/tk maintainer for the last couple of years, I have decided that I can no longer go it alone. For this reason, I am attempting to put together a team to co-maintain tcl/tk and some of it's add-ons (e.g. tcllib, itcl).

iTech Media announced today that it was acquiring Mad Penguin, a popular Linux and open source online magazine, for an undisclosed sum.

The most common input/output model used in Linux is synchronous I/O. After a request is made in this model, the application blocks until the request is satisfied; the calling application requires no CPU while it awaits the completion of the I/O request. But in some cases there's a need to overlap an I/O request with other processing. The POSIX asynchronous I/O (AIO) API provides this capability. In this article, get an overview of the API and see how to use it.

2006 may be remembered as the year that the Free Software Foundation (FSF) reached out to the community. The FSF has already undertaken an unprecedented year-long consultation process about the revisions to the GNU General Public License, and the Defective By Design campaign against digital rights management technologies. Now, the FSF is planning a third campaign to deliver its message about ethical software to social activists outside the technical communities.

iTech Media announced today that it was acquiring Mad Penguin, a popular Linux and open source online magazine, for an undisclosed sum.

Many readers tell me they're avoiding Microsoft. Some object to the cost, some to the security problems, and many are appalled at Microsoft's abuse of good customers with paperwork problems through the Bully Software Alliance. So today the information is for the Anybody But Microsoft (ABM) crowd, and others who are unaware how much progress has been made in the last two years on alternative operating systems and applications.

The release of CentOS 4.4 completes the quartet of updates for Versions 3 and 4 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and of the derivates by the CentOS Project based upon it.