Showing all newswire headlines

Our list of Unix books, papers, and usenet postings continues to grow, so much so that I thought it best to move it to its own page, so we can organize it and continue to work on it on its own page. With that end in mind, Groklaw member grouch has collected all the comments you've left on the original article, and he's put them all together in one list.
Nice bit of work, Grouch!

Journalist Zenone Sovilla founded publishing company Nonluoghi Libere Edizioni (the name approximately means "Non-Places Free Editions") in 2002 after two years' experience running an online community called Nonluoghi.it, which he created to discuss social and political issues, with particular attention to the relationships between democracy and information. The focus of the newborn publishing house was on participatory democracy, libertarian theories, and nonviolence. Right at the start, Sovilla decided that this new business would not only support the philosophy behind free software, but also practiced it in full, since "it looked to be the only way to be consistent with the company mission." In practice, adopting free software was a bold choice in autumn 2001.

MySQL AB, developer of open source database, announced that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has selected MySQL as its open source server-side database standard.

The Linux Professional Institute's recent decision to globally hike exam prices means SA geeks are running out of time to get certified cheaply. By next year, South Africans could be paying in excess of R900 per exam, about triple the current price.

Using OpenDocument format text in OpenOffice, KOffice and AbiWord

The OpenDocument Foundation has announced that it has created an Open Document Format plugin for Microsoft Office 97 and up. Distribution plans are still up in the air, but It may be released publicly as part of Google Pack. (Linux-Watch)

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes: "The driver, in theory, will be able to support any flavor of 802.11 -- a, b, g, and come the day it's finally approved, n. The driver doesn't concern itself with those issues. It's up to the chipsets' hardware radios to deal with speed concerns. The driver is designed to control the radio hardware on the target device, not replace it."

Sun said Thursday that it would alter its licensing terms in order to make Java easier to bundle with open source operating systems. The announcement is expected to come at the JavaOne conference later this month.

When technology serves its owners, it is liberating. When it is designed to serve others, over the owner's objection, it is oppressive. There's a battle raging on your computer right now -- one that pits you against worms and viruses, Trojans, spyware, automatic update features and digital rights management technologies. It's the battle to determine who owns your computer.

DistroWatch reports - The release candidate of dyne:II is out. In this 2.0 version there is a lot more than 1.0, it will take a while for me to write complete documentation about all the features, but let's go on and see what happens. In particular this release solves all problems with nesting, Unionfs for writable /usr, PCMCIA automatic recognition and... runs on Apple's new Intel based machines (docking and booting from CD with bootcamp). OSDir has some nice shots of dyne:bolic in the dyne:bolic 2.0 RC Screenshot Tour.

Current and former OpenEmbedded users are invited to complete a 23-question online survey conducted by the project. The first OpenEmbedded user survey aims to help the project understand its user-base and their needs, in order to improve the tool. The OpenEmbedded project maintains open-source embedded development tools primarily targeting Linux.

One of the basic premises of evolution is that traits that are advantageous to the species are perpetuated and adverse ones winnowed. Extending the metaphor to software design project management, one would expect that modern "best practices" would be the ones that had resulted in the most benefit to companies. James Turner analyzes why this is not usually the case, and what can be done to correct the problem.

Spam email is the plague of the 21st century; SpamBayes is its cure. This client-side application analyzes all incoming email messages and automatically sorts out those that are unwanted.

Tentative designs call for a machine that uses one-tenth of the power of conventional laptops, a 7-inch screen and the Linux operating system. The project's partners include Google and AMD.

Covalent announced a strategic partnership with Chariot Solutions on Apache Geronimo support

Red Hat, the global provider of open source to the enterprise, announced that they have welcomed four new resellers as Red Hat Ready Business Partners to cater to markets in northern India.

Think of the children

WCIT The US has fallen way behind other nations with regard to its embrace of open source technology, and the situation may only get worse. Open source coders face their grandest test to date as organizations place more and more scrutiny on the origins and value of FOSS (free and open source software) products.

Chevron has two U.S. data centers - one in Houston, Texas, and the other 1600 miles away in San Ramon, California. These data centers are the centralized service hubs for the business units located in their respective areas.

Pay-per-click fraud. First, Google was on the hook. Now it's Yahoo's turn. The plaintiffs charge Yahoo enabled all manner of it. Anybody can file a lawsuit. But to assess Yahoo's chances of getting off, you need to see who they're up against. After taking a look at each of these battle-hardened class-action litigators, you'll probably conclude that Yahoo's going to be writing a real big check.

The 'new' XiTi-report about Firefox-usage worldwide is in, and it shows us Finland has lost is lead in Firefox-usage to Slovenia. Three countries have have more than 30% usage of Firefox now: Slovenia, Finland and Croatia, while the European average is 19,4%.
Usage in the continent of Northern America is 15,6% now.

[ The report is a few weeks old, but I thought our readers might like it anyway. The survey was based on 268M visits to the websites audited by XiTi during a full week.
Note to our American readers: Please read a point where this report states a comma. - hkwint ]