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Obsidian Systems has announced the availability of the international OpenICDL course in South Africa, which skills users in basic computer literacy for Linux, OpenOffice.org, Evolution and Firefox.

All the Power and Functionality of ISE Foundation Now Available in WebPACK - With up to 70% Performance Advantage Over Competing Solutions

Introduced in ATI's v8.19.10 proprietary display drivers for their RADEON series was support for PowerPlay. For the uninitiated, ATI's PowerPlay allows the user to specify various "power-states", or rather various frequencies and voltages at which the card can operate. The purpose for these various performance levels is ultimately to allow mobile users to save on battery life through running at reduced speeds when not performing strenuous 3D tasks.

Linux for enterprise applications is among the 6 hot technologies for 2006.

IBM has joined with three other technology companies, seven universities and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to adopt guiding principles to speed collaborative research for open source software. These 12 enterprises believe the principles will speed innovation and contribute to open source software research, thus enabling the development of related industry standards and greater interoperability, while managing intellectual property in a more balanced manner.

Martin Gregory does one thing, and one thing only, for Microsoft: lobby against open source. Dan Warne talked to him.

Vendors demonstrated everything from a mobile Skype Wi-Fi phone to the ability to support Skype calling through a media center (Yes, making a Skype call through your TV). Netgear (www.netgear.com) took the high-profile lead with the rollout of NETGEAR's Skype Wi-Fi phone. The phone will deliver a “Skype Experience” over any open Wi-Fi access point without having to be tethered to a laptop or PC, so it can be used anywhere with wireless access. The NETGEAR phone is pre-loaded with Skype software and is ready to be used with a wireless network, leaving the user to simply enter a Skype username and password. More information on the Skype Wi-Fi phone, including pricing and availability, will be announced in the first quarter of 2006.

Bitrock Incorporated has announced the release of BitRock InstallBuilder 3.0. The development tool turns the application packaging, distribution and deployment process of multiplatform applications into a fast, easy and cost effective task for independent software vendors and custom application developers. The new version includes native support for Mac OSX, as well as Linux, Linux PPC, Windows, HP-UX, AIX, Solaris and Free BSD. InstallBuilder 3.0 also includes new features such as support for integration with the RPM package management system and the ability to select which components to install during the installation process.

The division between IT workers and marketing and sales staff is so notorious that it is a regular source of humor for comics ranging from Dilbert to General Protection Fault. According to Markku Kauppinen, president of the North American Extended DISC franchise, the division reflects widespread differences in behavioral styles between the two group. However, by learning how to accommodate these differences and watching their own behavioral tendencies, IT employees can learn to complement the marketing staff and develop a truly effective team.

The Venezuelan revolution is perhaps the first revolution in history saved by computer hackers and is one of the reasons the government is so very strong on promoting the use of free software, particularly in public administration....

I eventually meet up with Jeff Zucker from Perl Mongers, who traveled by bus from Caracas. He also failed to find any of these promised military checkpoints filled with marauding troops. I eventually also met up with the well known international free software activist, Juan Carlos Gentile, who drove all the way from Caracas along the same roads. While it is said to take 10 hours to drive from Caracas to Maracaibo, as he is Italian, naturally I expected he would arrive in only 5. These two, and Ana Isabel Delgato from the Debian Venezuela group, were my primary "translation team" whenever I spoke with others who did not speak english.

“It looks like Peter Quinn got a big pile of political nastiness in his stocking from Santa this year,” the Rat remarked to his boss recently, after reading about the Massachusetts CIO’s sudden resignation. The controversial CIO, responsible for the move to mandate that state agencies use the OpenDocument format for all electronic documents, hit the “eject” button on his tenure after the mud started flying from all quarters.

Quinn’s push toward OpenDoc—an open standard created by an alliance of Apple Computer Inc., IBM Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and others—was seen as a threat to Microsoft Corp.’s domination of office suites.

Sure, Microsoft—not among the alliance members—has now moved to make its own new document format an “open” standard, partially because of Massachusetts’ move. The Redmond giant is working through the standards group ECMA International as it did with VBScript, er, ECMAscript a few years ago.

But Quinn hadn’t counted on the amount of stink that could arrive on his doorstep after he became a champion to the open-source community.

The SCO Group is trying to make more charges stick in its case against Novell. What took them so long?

Phoenix Arizona-based open source company Unicon said today that it has hired a new open source expert to serve as its software architect. Unicon, which supports development of portals for colleges, universities, and other higher education institutions, said that John A. Lewis has joined the company to direct its open source efforts. Lewis is the lead developer of the Spring Portlet MVC, a JSR-168 compliant portlet APi for the open source Spring Framework project. Lewis was previously CTO at Arcanum Education Solutions and director of product development for Entrada Software.

I know that if I start listing reasons it is going to seem kind of shallow, but you need to understand where I am coming from. Maybe this way, when you meet someone new, you will be better prepared. And Just what does this have to do with Linux...? Trust me.

JANUARY 09, 2006 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Two software companies are beefing up their Web applications using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) and contributing parts of their products to the open-source community to try to spur further Ajax development.

Before you start flaming, please understand that both I and the author of the news article are open source PROponents. We like open source. I've made a career of it.

But that doesn't mean open source is somehow infallible. Sometimes the comments here read like a devout Catholic thinking I've started a smear campaign against the immaculate conception. Keep in mind that it's just software and that it can always get better. Things get better as we find their bugs and improve them.

So, with that caveat....

Proponents of the open-sourced GNU/Linux operating system are quick to compare it favorably to Microsoft Windows, citing a series of advantages for their favorite OS. The first one to come up is invariably price, an area where Linux can always claim victory, as US$0 is a difficult target for any closed-source software company to beat. However, price alone is rarely a convincing argument for switching operating systems, so other benefits are quickly put forward.

Ziff Davis' CIO Insight Research Study named Red Hat the leader in vendor value and overall satisfaction according to US senior-level IT executives surveyed.

With Linux continuing its struggle to convince the world's businesses that it's a viable Windows alternative, ZDNet asks in a four page analysis if the pending release of Windows Vista could finally provide the boost it's been waiting for.

FC4.netdev.7 (kernel-2.6.14-1.1656_FC4.netdev.7) is now available.