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One of the PostgreSQL's most sophisticated features is so called Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC), a standard technique for avoiding conflicts between reads and writes of the same object in database. Unfortunately, there is one downside to MVCC, the databases tend to grow over time. This article shows two ways to get your space back!

The new Google Earth for Linux is both a great tool and a great toy, writes DesktopLinux.com columnist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols. Find the TV dish on your roof, discover a new route to grandma's house, or simply be an eye in the sky.

An embedded software house in St. Petersburg, Russia, is offering a high-reliability, small-footprint embedded Linux implementation that supports several 668-based CompuLab SBCs (single-board computers). Intrasoft's "IS Linux G686" OS uses JFS to minimize the risk of unrecoverable data loss, compared with ext3, according to the company.

I think that if people want to jump out of airplanes, down cliffs, or free-climb El Capitan, like Captain Kirk, they should be allowed to do that -- even though it's very clear that they may be stupid things to do that are likely to get them killed. One of the more powerful and hard to refute arguments for Digital Rights/Restrictions Management (DRM), though, is that it can be used in life-critical systems to prevent failures due to users' own modifications -- and it seems to me that this is a sticky case of balancing the right to be stupid with the right to be ignorant.

Following closely on the heels of its Picasa news, Google is offering a beta of Google Earth that -- for the first time -- includes a Linux version of the 3-D mapping and visualization program.

There was so much great stuff at this month's Red Hat Summit that we had to bring some home for our readers. Don't miss the visionary keynote videos--Eben Moglen and Cory Doctorow really brought the house down with their talks on privacy, digital freedom, and copyright. And we've got even more information about the projects that were announced during the conference. The Mugshot team speaks up, and there's also features on Dogtail, 108, Bugzilla, GnuCash, and Spring.

An improperly composed mass e-mail sent Thursday by open source database vendor MySQL erroneously included some 9,300 customer e-mail addresses in the body of the note, not the information about a series of summer support specials the company meant to announce.

All of this made me wonder. What if the IRC bot could also live on my AIM list? That way I could query him from work, where the pointy hairs can't live without their AIM and so they leave it open for use, and my friends who don't use IRC would have a new resource for looking up PostgreSQL related information as well.

The future of processor cooling might be in a new water jet technique. A little spray of water on the backside of a processor might be the next big thing in chip cooling. Also, learn about how Robot/CHECKUP service tells your iSeries where it could be better automated, and a new partnership for IBM to build cluster of software and hardware design centers in Wales.

Are you planning a move to Linux from a Unix environment? If so, this detailed questionnaire can help you get ready for the migration.

There comes a time in every PC user's life when he or she considers changing or updating the system's operating system. But, how do you go about the process without taking a chance of trashing all your valuable programs and data?

Bodog.com is a casino, sport-betting emporium, and online poker palace. The site gets busy; during football season it takes almost 200,000 bets per week, while the virtual poker tables can handle up to 5,000 bettors at a time. Bodog started out using WebLogic and Versant on Solaris, but ran into problems when a bug repeatedly took servers down at critical junctures. Vendors didn't offer much help, but a switch to Linux and JBoss brought Bodog some much-needed relief in the form of more reliable uptime and scaling capacity.

As Juan, a soccer fan, plugs away at his desk job, he isn't as distraught as he might be for having to miss his home country's appearance in the World Cup. Juan's Firefox browser is decked out in his national colors and fills him in each time his team scores a GOOOOOOAAALLL!

If you're one of the many users who has two (or more) computers on your desk, you might get tired of switching between the keyboard and mouse on different systems. KVMs are one solution, but if you'd like to save a few bucks and be able to switch between two or more computers with a flick of the mouse, Synergy is the software for you.

In in Part 1 of this series, you'll learn how to use the LDAP Tools for Eclipse to configure Geronimo's built-in Apache Directory LDAP server. In Part 2 you'll query the LDAP server and update the Web page using Ajax. You'll also get familiar with some of the techniques to build LDAP-centric applications using the toolsets available in the Java platform and Ajax.

Large IT shops using HP OpenView or BMC Patrol may now have an open source alternative. Nagios is a Linux-based host, service and network monitoring program that is starting to attract attention because of its quick configuration and easy maintenance.

The GNOME Foundation is offering USD$9000 to female students in order to promote the participation of women in GNOME-related development.

The money originates from GNOME's participation in the Google "Summer of Code" program (code.google.com/soc/), for which GNOME developers will mentor 20 students working throughout the northern summer on GNOME-related projects. This year GNOME received 181 applications to Google's program, yet none were from women. The GNOME Foundation has therefore chosen to reinvest Google's contribution into a new program designed to increase the participation of women in GNOME. The program has no official relationship with Google.

IBM announced today it will offer a PHP Integration Kit for WebSphere Application Server (WAS) Community Edition.

It is great to see that some members of parliament are taking the time to learn more about FLOSS. While this introduction to the event focuses on using FLOSS to save money, it also provides an opening to discuss some of the policy issues facing our part of the software sector.

In the wake of the publication at the beginning of March of the new version of its standard for Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) by the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL), the US real-time specialist FSMLabs has now announced that it has put the finishing touches on a complete 64-bit Linux distribution that meets the new specifications.