Showing all newswire headlines

The inside scoop on upcoming additions and changes to GNOME and Ubuntu.

A new Firefox extension has been debuted that incorporates peer-to-peer capabilities into the browser via a sidebar. AllPeers "combines the strength of Firefox and the efficiency of BitTorrent" to add media sharing to the long list of available extensions.

Matthew Szulik, chief executive of Linux seller Red Hat, has filed a plan that sets a schedule for him to sell company stock so it can be sold in the future regardless of what material information the executive knows about the company. Red Hat disclosed the plan Tuesday, saying the executive wanted to diversify his financial investments. The 10b5-1 plan, when combined with other stock sales planned for January 2006, won't exceed 27 percent of Szulik's common stock.

Stuart C Wells joined Sun Microsystems in 1988 and has served in a number of key management positions. At present, in his role as the executive vice-president (Utility Computing), Wells’ task includes driving the utility grid computing initiatives and remanufacturing programmes. Reporting directly to Sun’s President and COO Jonathan Schwartz, he led the Sun ONE product development and product marketing functions for three years.

After 24 years in the industry, Wells holds five US patents in multimedia, video, 3D graphics and imaging, and has numerous international publications. In a teté-e-teté with Business Standard, Wells talks on myriad issues, including Sun’s renewed Wall Street attack and maps it against his present mission to now gradually increase adoption for Sun’s utility computing business. Excerpts:

My name is Henry the Adequate, and I am a superhero. Recently I have seen several very interesting articles on software utilities of use to sysadmins, such as

/dev/null - Definitely deserves a place here because it provides a source of unlimited storage. For example typing "mv ~ /dev/null" will free up a whole lot of space on your home partition. And the good thing is you can just keep putting stuff in /dev/null and it will never fill up.

Are you looking for something to buy with a gift certificate or for a gift exchange -- or just something neat for your computer? MozillaQuest Magazine (MozillaQuest.Com) reports: "Today we take a very quick look at live CDs, flash memory, digital music players, open source software, some books, and a digital camera that make nice gifts for almost any occasion. All work with both the Linux and Windows."

From The Rational Edge: This first article in a new series on building accessible applications with Eclipse begins by looking at assistive technologies and disabilities. It then discusses the functions and features that make Eclipse well suited for creating accessible applications on Windows or UNIX.

Linux has a number of useful bandwidth monitoring and management programs. A quick search on Freshmeat.net for bandwidth returns a number of applications. However, if all you need is a basic overview of your total bandwidth usage, iptables is all you really need -- and it's already installed if you're using a Linux distribution based on the 2.4.x or 2.6.x kernels.

While Internet Explorer usage shows relatively modest drops among consumers, it is in freefall with a critical constituency: SMB network managers. More administrators are running alternative browsers than ever. And when they pull the trigger, they're taking their users with them.

After more than two and a half years, SCO must finally turn over to the U.S. District Court in Utah any proof it has that there's Unix code in Linux.

WE REPORTED PRE-YULE that Dell UK was trying out shipping Firefox on desktop and notebook PCs. Blake Ross has confirmed that on his Firefox blog, if you hadn't already noticed. But according to news.com, that's not what Australia plans to do.

Many times, you want to execute a command not only on one server, but also on several servers. Here is an article that explains how to use distributed command execution.

tentakel' tool you can is a program for executing the same command on many hosts in parallel using various remote methods. With the help of tool called tentakel, you run distributed command execution. It is a program for executing the same command on many hosts in parallel using ssh. Main advantage is you can create several sets of servers according requirements. The command is executed in parallel on all servers in this group thus result into time saving.

Peter Quinn has announced to his employees that he will be resigning as CIO of Massachusetts, in the wake of continuing political in-fighting and unfounded (and publicly refuted) accusations over travel improprieties in the Boston Globe

As Linux Users, we may take for granted our immunity to certain "nasties" which Windows Users are subject. It looks like the state of Texas is "saddlin' up" to ride against Sony. Of course, it's Windows Users that will gain from this.

Have Americans become lazy when it comes to technology? We think so and offer a brief example as to why. Agree or not, one thing has become obvious...some of us are just plain lazy.

Why didn't I think of this? Bundle OpenOffice.org, TurboCASH, the GIMP, and some installation scripts on a CD. Round out the package with Gaim and Firefox, and sell it in retail stores to Windows users for $20.

Winona Area Public Schools plans to pilot a computer system next year that could save it from having to continually update or replace desktop computers.

Flies said the district has studied two common software systems, Linux and Citrix, that operate thin clients. It plans to test Linux, free “open source” software that has its own generic version of Microsoft Office, at the learning center.

In the article "My sysadmin toolbox" NewsForge asked readers to "let us know about your most valuable utilities." Well, here are mine.

Dear Massachusetts (Governor Romney, Secretary Galvin, Senator Hart, et al):

Are you watching this?

Microsoft, as you may have heard, has been under pressure in Europe to make their APIs available to its competition for interoperability purposes. Now, so far, that has meant only that they have to do so for non-Linux competitors, as they were able to achieve a carve-out that leaves Linux and all FOSS out in the cold during the appeal. For all their other competitors in the server space, they were ordered "to disclose complete and accurate interface documentation which would allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers". Of course, they claim they have, and they did turn over documentation.

But Professor Neil Barrett, the Monitoring Trustee, monitoring their compliance with the EU order says, according to the EU Commission press release, the technical documentation Microsoft submitted is "totally unfit at this stage for its intended purpose":

Since the 24(1) Decision, Microsoft has revised the interoperability information that it is obliged to disclose. However, the Commission takes the preliminary view that this information is incomplete and inaccurate. This view is supported by the report of the Monitoring Trustee, which concludes that, “any programmer or programming team seeking to use the Technical Documentation for a real development exercise would be wholly and completely unable to proceed on the basis of the documentation. The Technical Documentation is therefore totally unfit at this stage for its intended purpose.” The report also states that, “the documentation appears to be fundamentally flawed in its conception, and in its level of explanation and detail... Overall, the process of using the documentation is an absolutely frustrating, time-consuming and ultimately fruitless task. The documentation needs quite drastic overhaul before it could be considered workable.”

Ask yourself this: is it because Microsoft doesn't know how to write clear documentation?

And why not ...Last week Progress Software announced it will acquire Neon Systems and merge that company with its DataDirect operating division. Simple question: why? For those of you unfamiliar with either DataDirect or Neon, a brief exposition may be appropriate. First: DataDirect.