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While huge progress has been made toward"user-centric" identity, I still have problems with"user-centric" anything. The point-of-view is still outside the user. It's still organizational, corporate. If you're"centric" about users, where are you? Right, outside the user. And inside something that's, well, not quite human. Or worse, that's super-human. Not a peer, but a superior.Think about it: Areyou"user-centric"?

The resignation of Matthew Garrett, one of the most active developers in Debian, has drawn attention to some ongoing issues about how the project operates. Specifically, Garrett's announcement on his blog cites a lack of civility and a slowness in decision-making, and compares Debian unfavorably to Ubuntu, the Debian-derived distribution which is increasingly attracting the efforts of many Debian maintainers.

When it's time to pass around sensitive or private data in Web application development, you soon realize the need for encrypting that data. This is where Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to protect your applications becomes very useful. In this tutorial get help navigating the tricky waters of application-to-application encryption, and learn how to configure Apache Geronimo 1.1 and 1.0 with SSL and test the SSL with the Geronimo Hello World application.

Have you ever been in a situation where you had to run multiple instances of the same application, with different input data each time, in sequence, because the job was too computation-intensive and your machine not powerful enough to run all the instances simultaneously? The solution to that problem could be to harness the machines that are already connected to your local network and apply their unused CPU cycles to your projects. Condor, a specialized batch system for managing compute-intensive jobs, may be your answer.

Sony Ericsson announced that it is joining the Eclipse community as Add-in Provider Member. By becoming an Add-in Provider, Sony Ericsson aims to contribute to the Eclipse ecosystem through creating Eclipse plug-ins of benefit to the global mobile application developer community.

It is my privilege to announce on behalf of the team members of the PCLinuxOS Magazine Project sponsored by MyPCLinuxOS.com, the September 2006 introductory issue is available for download! We've put a lot of effort into producing a quality magazine made for the community, by the community.

A transcript is now online from RMS's recent presentation of the changes in the second draft of GNU GPL version 3. The focuses are on DRM, patents, internationalisation, enforcement, and licence compatibility.

Bergen City Council in Norway has hit back at reports that it has abandoned its flagship Linux migration project, branding them "exaggerated" and insisting it has completed plans to move many of its servers over to Linux. However, the council did admit that it was postponing plans to migrate 12,000 desktops to Linux claiming it had other investment priorities.

Software is ultimately composed of congealed ideas, so ideas are very important in the minds of software developers. The key to market power in the software industry lies in the minds of developers. Fashion plays a role too; some ideas are fashionable and some are not. The idea, or philosophy, of open source is powerful, frictionless, and seductive.

In broad terms there are three key elements to consider in the development of any new application – or any new product, for that matter. The obvious one, certainly from a software point of view, is the technology to be used – the language, the target platform and operating system, and the rest.

Of course, there are a variety of different types of integration and there are a range of different things that you can do with data integration. I am not here to suggest that there is another way of tackling data integration in general. However, there are specific aspects of data integration (and in this context I am talking specifically about the data movement aspects of integration) where there may be an alternative that is worth considering.

The Indian IT industry has started scouring the provinces for graduates to fill the burgeoning number of vacancies in the sector. The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), India's IT trade association, this month begins testing graduates in "tier-two cities" to vet them for employment in multinational services firms.

Trolltech has released a second preview of Qt Jambi - a prototype version of Qt that allows Java programmers to use the popular cross-platform development framework. This release incorporates the feedback of over 1700 beta testers, and features new additions like Web Start functionality, improved integration with Eclipse and single JAR file deployment for Qt Jambi-based applications.

Sun Microsystems hopes to whet the appetite of developers for its tools with a preview program providing early access to its next Sun Studio suite. The Sun Studio Express Program is giving C, C++ and Fortran developers early access to features in future releases of Sun Studio while also taking feedback from partners and customers.

Until now, security-conscious email users could employ encryption with traditional email clients, but were out of luck with webmail services. Freenigma, a service to add encryption to third-party webmail services via a Firefox plugin, aims to add security to the convenience of webmail. My trial of the service indicates that it's making a good start, but has room to improve.

If you are writing software for Debian GNU/Linux or deratives like Ubuntu then setting up an APT repository is a very useful thing to do. It's often not possible to get your software into the official repositories of already released distributions. Setting up an APT repository for your users makes it very easy for them to keep up-to-date with the latest version of your software, far easier than providing .deb's as downloads on your website.

Hanbit Electronics and Pepper Computer will ship a third generation Linux-powered webpad "on or before September 30th," Pepper confirmed Aug. 31. Compared to its predecessors, the Pepper Pad 3 boasts speedier web browsing, faster and more comprehensive multimedia support, smaller size, reduced weight, and numerous hardware enhancements, according to the company.

[Is it me, or is $700 kind of steep for a portable web browsing box? - dcparris]

The good news is that Novell is now competing with a company whose marketing savvy is even worse than its.

[Editor's note: Shoudn't "its" be "theirs" or "their own"? Anyway, interesting perspective on the dual between Novell and Red Hat over Zen. - dcparris]

It used to be ‘normal’ to not have a favorite brand of a browser; back in the days when the major choice was in the selection of the computer processor (Intel or Pentium?), computer programs (Microsoft or Apple?), or Sony, HP, or Toshiba for the laptop? Today’s influx of new browsers and user options has increased the potential for internet navigation for millions of web users. Mozilla Firefox has become a part of a booming community of browser users that offers additional benefits in add-ons and plug-ins; it is an open source code project, attempting to make its way to become a superior browser of choice.