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Monitoring human rights abuses around the world can be a risky proposition with data collectors, reporters and community members at constant risk of discovery. The Martus project pits the best of the open source software world against abusers to create a safe and secure environment in which human rights activists can record and store data on abuses without fear.

Two major Linux advocates have published a report aimed at rebutting Microsoft's"Get the Facts" research campaign claiming that Linux has a higher total cost of ownership than Windows.

number6x writes: "Make sure any management types you come in contact with see this article".

Related to:
BSA Offering Rewards of $50,000 for the First Time in the USA

For the average home computer user there is no need to install a complex package such as the Internet Software Consortium's BIND DNS or DHCP server, since there are far simpler lower resource tools to use, for example dnsmasq. For those who you wish to learn how to use ISC's BIND and DHCP, for example as a learning exercise, this is how I got it all to work in Debian Sarge, the current stable version of Debian GNU/Linux.

The Center for Internet Security (CIS) is a non-profit association for the promotion of computer security. Its members, largely North American, range from IBM and Motorola to universities and individuals. Through the consensus of members, it develops a list of best practices for Windows, Linux, Solaris and Free BSD, as well as Cisco routers, Oracle databases, and Apache Web servers. These best practices are incorporated into benchmark scripts and accompanying PDF guides for interpreting the results and improving security with a series of actions and scripts. The CIS Linux Benchmark provides a comprehensive checklist for system hardening.

As Linux guru, Jon “maddog” Hall, pointed out in an interview recently, in the past Microsoft has been able to successfully transition its user base to a new way of doing things because there has been no viable alternative in the marketplace. When it comes to commoditised office productivity software, however, why would users want to spend money on a new snazzy Word or Excel package that they have to learn and get used to, when they can either keep what they’ve got or download a free copy of an open source version that does the job just as well. For someone like me, the question is would Office 12 enable me to write this article any faster, better or easier? I think not.

MPlayer is a movie player for Linux (runs on many other Unices, and non-x86 CPUs, see the documentation). It plays most MPEG, VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, FLI, RM, NuppelVideo, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies, too (without the avifile library).

For those of you wondering where the pictures are for this trip, it seems I am having trouble setting up a VPN tunnel out through this hotel's ISP, which is the only way to get image content up on LT's server. I will keep trying; one of the conference participants has a solid proxy link out from his laptop, and he offered to let me borrow the connection. If need be, I'll create a trip album when I get back home.

Welcome to this year's 7th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Xgl. The "word" has surely entered the consciousness of many Linux users who, thanks to Novell's enhancements dramatically unveiled last week, can look forward to an exciting new world on their Linux desktops later this year. Naturally, SUSE Linux is likely to be the first one to integrate the new features into their upcoming release, although expect some delays from the original schedule. In other news: Mandriva's CEO describes his working day, the developers of MEPIS consider switching their base to Ubuntu, Gentoo gets an updated Portage tool, and Slackware moves closer to version 11.0 with one massive update. The latest release of Mockup, a Debian-based distribution built with Qt 4, is the feature of our "first look" series. Happy reading! Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch

The Linux Tutorial is please to announce the inclusion of various HOWTOs on our site. We have chosen this method of providing you access to this information for a couple of reasons:

• Visitors will have immediate access to the necessary information and do not need to go searching for it.
• This site serves as a mirror for this information, thus reducing the load on other sites.
• Having the information locally allows easier integration with the other features we provide.

Microsoft's Anti-Spyware program is causing troubles for people who also use Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus software; apparently, a recent update to Microsoft's anti-spyware application flags Norton as a password-stealing program and prompts users to remove it.

Review: Multiplatform IDE offers visual interface tools, capable source editor.

This is a practical selection of the commands we use most often. Press to see the listing of all available command (on your PATH). On my small home system, it says there are 2595 executables on my PATH. Many of these "commands" can be accessed from your favourite GUI front-end (probably KDE or Gnome) by clicking on the right menu or button. They can all be run from the command line. Programs that require GUI have to be run from a terminal opened under a GUI.

Marc Fleury isn't talking, but sources say JBoss is about to be sold, making its founder a rich man and a hero to those following open-source business models.

What is the correct right way to rebuild package in Debian whilst preventing those packages from being downgraded, without applying a hold upon them?

The fact that Microsoft is the one offering the new service bothers me greatly. The reason is that it will create a conflict-of-interest. In my opinion, Microsoft has failed to make Windows as secure as it should be and now they have an incentive to continue failing in that regard.

Sun Microsystems will publish open-source technical drafts for conditional access specifications (CAS) and digital rights management (DRM) within the next 10 days, the company said Friday.

The open-source project is under Sun's Open Media Commons (OMS) initiative to licence content to individuals rather than machines, such as mobile phones, MP3 players, PCs and set-top boxes.

"The specifications need more work before they can ship, but there are many startups that would have shipped them a long time ago," said Tom Jacobs, director of research at Sun Labs, and project lead for Open Media Commons. "We think it will take between 12 and 18 months to complete, but in reality we will have specs in which independent companies can either modify existing products or build new ones before the end of the year."

A Kalzium double bill today, with Kalzium gaining recognition in OsnaBrück University's annual prize giving, and this week's People Behind KDE interview. Find out everything you wanted to know about chemistry, the small print on toothpaste, and why not to visit Bavaria in the People Behind KDE interview with Carsten Niehaus, author of Kalzium. Read on for details of the prize.

Internet Explorer users can be as much as 21 times more likely to end up with a spyware-infected PC than people who go online with Mozilla's Firefox browser, academic researchers from Microsoft's backyard said in a recently published paper.

"We can't say whether Firefox is a safer browser or not," said Henry Levy, one of the two University of Washington professors who, along with a pair of graduate students, created Web crawlers to scour the Internet for spyware in several 2005 forays. "But we can say that users will have a safer experience [surfing] with Firefox."

In an effort to reduce its desktop TCO by at least 25 percent, the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority will start implementing open source thin clients as early as June this year...

While no specific reference to Linux was made in the document, one source familiar with the RTA's plans said Linux vendor Novell is "most likely" to win the contract. If so, it will tie in with the RTA's existing installations of Novell identity and client management products such as Zenworks.