Showing all newswire headlines

MUNICH - Florian Mueller, the founder of Europe's award-winning NoSoftwarePatents campaign, believes the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) should not soften the patent-related provisions in its draft GPLv3 license.

[I wholeheartedly agree with Mueller. - dcparris]

Symphony OS is a GNU/Linux distribution designed to innovate from the ground up. Although originally based on Knoppix and now on Debian stable, it quickly differentiates itself from the bulk of distros by implementing the ideas articulated in a so-called grey paper on user interface design by Jason Spisak, one of the co-founders of Lycoris. Often, Symphony's implementations challenge UI assumptions on any platform. At other times, the possible shortcomings of Symphony OS' solutions raise issues themselves. Either way, in putting the May 2006 beta through its paces, I found it impossible to stop thinking about UI design. Even when Symphony OS does not provide ultimate answers, it raises questions about usability that are too often ignored.

Most of the time, when someone who uses Windows wants to check out Linux, they don't know where to start. As Scott Morris wrote his 160-page book about Linux, this is the problem he sought to solve. This book is free of charge. It's perfect for that one person who you've always wanted to introduce to Linux, but never had the time. Well, now you can.

More than 270 years ago, Carolus Linnaeus in his book Systema Naturae, attempted to categorize all biology on the Earth into a series of kingdoms. Web application security vendor Fortify thinks that the same kingdom approach can be taken to classify Web vulnerabilities.

[Let me guess.... They're just standing on the shoulders of giants. - dcparris]

Getting something free has a price, whether it’s learning how to use a piece of software or making sure that something you’ve downloaded doesn’t have spyware or malware tagging along with it.

Several steps can be taken to secure the default mysql installation.

According to the editor's letter in last week's inaugural edition of Sage, a magazine produced by anti-malware vendor McAfee, "Open source is not to blame for current security trends." Maybe not, but apparently it's still expected to take the fall.

OK, this has nothing to do with Linux or Free/Libre Open Source Software. But, darnit, it's funny.

[Gotta admit, it explains clearly why I use GNU/Linux. - dcparris]

Twice a year, the supercomputer market and the IT industry at large, gets a sense of the massive amount of performance in supercomputers thanks to the Top 500 rankings. This ranking of supers, which are based on the Linpack Fortran benchmark test, are interesting, and it is only a slight exaggeration to say that companies and careers are affected dramatically (if not made or broken) by how many systems with a particular brand and using certain components are on the list.

Mercury Computer is sampling a PCI-Express add-in card powered by a Cell processor running Yellow Dog Linux. The Cell Accelerator Board (CAB) targets rendering, ray tracing, video/image processing, and signal processing applications, and is said to deliver 180 GFLOPS (billion floating-point operations per second).

This is a review of a good - I would say one of its kind - book which aims to be an all in one reference for people who are interested in porting Unix Applications to Linux. Considering that it took 3 people who are experts in their respective fields to come together to write this book speaks volumes about this niche subject.

Okay, I confess that I chose this headline to draw you into this blog entry. A more accurate headline would be"Operating systems need to disappear". But I don't want my meaning to be misconstrued. The term"operating systems" would have to include proprietary operating systems. If I say"proprietary operating systems need to disappear", I mean they should be wiped off the face of the earth. When I say Linux should disappear, I mean that end users shouldn't need to know it's there. Big difference. Add to that the fact that I would love to see Linux asthe operating system for all computing devices, and there's not much left to use as a headline except"Linux needs to disappear".

LXer Feature: 1 Aug 2006

What is the future of Linux and Free Software? A rigid little cult that accept only the Right People? Or a community that truly practices "Free as in Freedom"?

The mobile phone joint venture formed by NEC and Matsushita/Panasonic reportedly will include Texas Instruments (TI), and will be known as "Adcore-Tech Co. Ltd." TI will have a 12 percent share, and the venture will be capitalized at $103.8M, about 17 percent more than reported earlier, EE Times-Asia is reporting.

Linus Torvalds, who helped create the open source operating system Linux, is blasting the Free Software Foundation (FSF) again as the group releases its latest draft of a revised General Public License (GPL).

[...]

The FSF and the Software Freedom Law Center released the second discussion draft of the GNU GPL version 3 last week. The draft marks the halfway point of a yearlong public review process for proposing changes and finalizing the GPLv3.

[There have been a lot of stories about this since the Groklaw story broke. Most have been repeats of a few snippets of the Groklaw comments. This one, at least, provides some context. -- grouch]

Linux vendor Red Hat has signaled its intent to extend its presence in the telecoms sector with the launch of a tailored partner programme.

What do you do when you're the number two player in the embedded Linux space? Copy what makes #1 successful of course.

Examine the processes behind building a parser using the lex/flex and yacc/bison tools, first to build a simple calculator and then delve into how you can adopt the same principles for text parsing. Parsing text is an important part of many applications. Within UNIX, several elements of the OS rely on parsing text, from the shell you use to interact with the system, through to common tools and commands like awk or Perl, right through to the C compiler you use to build software and applications.

* GOVERNMENT NEWS: The Department of Defense releases report: "Open Technology Development Roadmap"
* WEBINAR: Service-Oriented Architecture
* GOVERNMENT TRAINING SPECIAL: GSA Federal Government discount
* RED HAT ROADSHOW: Linux in New York City
* UPCOMING EVENTS: Red Hat Government tradeshows

Don't worry about having to borrow someone's swim trunks again