Showing all newswire headlines

I recently did some rearranging of our network setup, in part with the explicit aim of removing user logon access to several of the servers (both for security and for performance reasons). In general this has worked out fine - we use NFS so that users can still access all the relevant directories. However, the RAID array is used, among other things, for users to back up their laptops to - which means that the server running the RAID array needs to act as an rsync server.

IBM Generic Web Services Client is a lightweight multi-platform tool designed for testing existing Web services from a Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP (LAMP) environment, as well as from WAMP (the corresponding Windows environment). The tool provides both direct and indirect (low-level) calls, using either the PHP5 SOAP extension or the NuSOAP package.

The elusive open source prior art repository -- attempted by several, failed at by all. What makes the Open Source as Prior Art (OSAPA) initiative, championed by OSDL, IBM, and others such as SourceForge.net, and announced by the USPTO Office in January, likely to succeed where others have failed? The answer can be found in the timely confluence of pressures on the different stakeholders, combined with an approach that leverages the existing resources and strengths of the open source community.

My sister Erika's second grade primary school class had a problem: it had four old computers running Microsoft Windows 98, and no educational software for the computers. The computers were used mainly for viewing children's educational Web sites, and playing simple Macromedia Flash games. I decided to introduce free software into her classroom. The results were heart-warming.

Zfone reignites privacy debate

Philip Zimmermann, best known as the developer of the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption algorithm, has released a new public beta of a software package designed to encrypt VoIP calls.Zfone uses Diffie-Helman to generate a per-session key for IP Telephony calls using a protocol called ZRTP, that Zimmermann says is superior to other approaches.…

As for the new version of the 500 or Cinquecento, scheduled for release in September 2007, Fiat has set up a Web site (www.Fiat500.com) inviting fans of the tiny car to submit ideas for its design.

De Meo likened the site to Linux, the computer operating system whose source code is open to the public to add, change and use as they see fit.

[You know you've arrived when you become part of a car salesman's pitch. -- grouch]

One of the hardest and most often repeated myth is that people either support the collection of monopoly rents (royalties) for every possible use of a work (every copy, every communication, every performance), or they oppose the idea of authors getting compensated for their work.

If packed demo rooms are any indication of interest in its latest Linux desktop, Novell has a willing audience.

On a desk in a messy office on the eighth floor of a building opposite the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sits a circuit board that might just transform education for millions of kids around the world.

A Brisbane-based team of developers has played a key part in the development of Linux-based mobile applications for software developer Trolltech.

Despite being headquartered in Norway, Trolltech has led its primary development team at its Brisbane base since 1999.

The Brisbane team was responsible for development of Trolltech's flagship software, Qtopia, an application platform for embedded Linux mobile phones, PDAs and other mobile computing devices.

NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR) and Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) have announced a global agreement to offer Novell(R) Linux Point of Service on NCR RealPOS(TM) retail point-of-sale (POS) terminals.

The agreement between Novell and NCR -- one of the world's largest store automation solution vendors -- makes a secure, reliable software platform and hardware combination available for retailers deploying Linux-based POS solutions. NCR's plans call for offering Novell Linux Point of Service on NCR EasyPoint(TM) kiosks and NCR FastLane(TM) self-checkout in the future.

For past three weeks, I have been seeing a steady increase in the number of referrers being sent to this site by Stumble Upon. I am sure others are experiencing similar kind of “traffic” referrals.
[...]
I decided to install it, and well, like Pete Cashmore, I find StumbleUpon simply addictive.

Musicians can now record a song, upload it to their own unique website, and sell it five minutes later, courtesy of the innovators at Broadjam Inc. Oh, the possibilities!

About Broadjam Inc. Broadjam Inc. is a rapidly growing company that provides web-based technology, software and services for the music industry and independent musicians around the world. The company operates one of the world's largest web communities for musicians and hosts a massive online database of searchable independent music.

Steven Titch writes: "While he’s clearly agitated enough to post two responses to one of my recent comments, D.C. Parris, editor-in-chief of LXer.com, fails to answer my central point – that it’s bad policy to mandate open source procurement." Read the rest of Titch's response on his blog.

[It's official. I'm a zealot now. Per Steven Titch, Senior Fellow, The Heartland Institute. - dcparris]

Opinion: People say wikis are wonderful, but really they are just another form of groupware, and not all that useful to most people.

I haven’t done much over the weekend. Oh, just this: I sat down and installed a certificate from CAcert, and made our web server and email setup a bit more secure. Here’s how:

The problem is that the Web is still mostly populated by the scary legacy of poorly structured HTML, much of it not even compliant to the more lenient SGML standard. XHTML is a friendly enough format for parsing and screen-scraping, but the Web still has a lot of messy HTML out there. In this tip Uche Ogbuji demonstrates the use of TagSoup to turn just about any HTML into neat XHTML.

Linux Networx has announced that ATK Launch Systems, a provider of advanced weapons and space systems, has ordered one of the company's Custom Supersystems. The system is expected to increase ATK Launch Systems' compute capability to over 2.24 teraflops.

Writer and network operator Kevin Milne has released another freely downloadable science fiction novel about a master hacker who creates the ultimate network penetration tool, a Sharp Zaurus PDA running Linux and special "Z4CK" software. Digital Force is a sequel to Milne's earlier Z4CK, and both are available for purchase or free download.

[Can you guessed what he used to write the book? - dcparris]

In "Acquiring data from the physical world" we examined how to use a microcontroller to turn physical events (such as reading a switch) into data and send that data to a Linux box via the serial line. With this capability you can do things like counting people passing through a gate or recording how the temperature changes over time in a factory process. You can then send the data to a Web page. In this article, we'll do it in reverse -- from a Web form, instruct a microcontroller to perform some actions.