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A speech verification system developed with Meraka's Human Language Technologies Research Group thwarts "recording attacks" by hackers.

Sometime ago, we asked your favorite email client. Over 9000 people voted, with over 50% choosing Mozilla Thunderbird.

The Third Worldwide Free Knowledge Forum was held last week in Maracaibo, Venezuela bringing together about 500 Venezuelan developers and advocates of "Software Libre" as well as speakers from FLOSS projects in Spain, Brazil, Columbia, the U.S. and Mexico.

Issues were open science, IP; languages like Python, Perl; apps and projects like OpenOffice, Bayonne. But there was also much activity around issues of specific interest to Venezuela including local projects to use FLOSS in social service programs and local efforts to prepare for the upcoming massive migration of public agencies to open source.

Diggable

Show Dreamworks how its done with the awesome open source 3D modeller, animator and renderer Blender.

It’s a lot easier to install Ubuntu on a new Dell Optiplex GX620 than it is to install Windows onto the same machine.

Provocative title that does not tell the full story. Yes Firefox is at NASA, only officially it is one of the two required browsers. In essence, while IE might be dropped in certain departments it is not NASA policy. Moreover, if Firefox is displacing IE it is against current policy. So be advised: keep the icon and have it run Firefox in IE mode,or ... Opera anyone?

Researchers at George Mason University are working on a new open source application meant to help users organize and cite materials they've found online. Called Firefox Scholar.

it's "incredibly smart bookmarking," "You're not just bookmarking the page, but you're automatically [capturing] author, title, all that info that scholars want to save."

Comment: Further to my previous article resulting from IBM’s annual analyst Software Group conference, here are some more thoughts on what IBM was talking about.

One of the things that struck me, and which I am not sure that I have seen discussed anywhere, is that an SOA (service oriented architecture) solution is topologically equivalent to the earlier hub-and-spoke architecture employed by EAI (enterprise application integration) vendors such as Tibco, Sun (SeeBeyond) and WebMethods.

Now, first off, I can't express how low my opinion of Gartner is as an organization. As a consultancy they are all but worthless and as punditry they represent a more transparent Cash-for-Media organization than anything of which Armstrong Williams could dream

Scientists Will Use Silicon Graphics Prism to Interpret Active-Source 3D Seismic Data, Including Tsunami Evidence in Oregon

Red Hat has unveiled the first full release of its open-source directory server, based on Netscape technology acquired a year ago. Fedora Directory Server (FDS) version 1.0 open-sources two important components not included with a release earlier this year - the console and administration engine.

Sun Microsystems Inc has finally announced the availability of the "Project Janis" Solaris Containers for Linux Applications, which allows applications written for Red Hat Linux to run on X86 and X64 iron to run inside a Linux ABI environment that is encased in a Solaris container.

When looking at desktop Linux by itself, any analysis of the subject quickly leads to this question: why do users choose one version over another? There are as many answers for this question as there are users to give them, but ultimately it should boil down to just a few key decisions which must be made. Considering this, it may be surprising to some people to find out how successful Ubuntu Linux has been relative to other distributions. Many survey's are taken over the internet which attempt to gather statistics on desktop Linux, and most of these sources agree that Ubuntu is one of the, if not the, most popular version of Linux on the desktop.

Evan Carew writes "In the 2.4 world, there's hope to get your Linksys WiFi card going, in 2.6, ye who enter here, abandon all hope. My story starts innocently enough at my local computer store where I made the mistake of asking the sales person what WiFi card would be compatible with my Linux distribution. He said he didn't know, but since Linksys already had Linux on their routers, their cards might work. Well, that sounded logical, so off I went to see if it worked."

[Ed: Brief, but good to know - dcparris]

The Open Source Development Labs' Desktop Linux (DTL) working group hosted a "Desktop Architects" meeting last week, at which the group targeted three specific areas to improve to bolster Linux adoption on the desktop. John Cherry, OSDL's Desktop Linux initiative manager, said that the meeting was "wildly successful," and other attendees seemed to share that assessment.

RALEIGH, N.C. – (NASDAQ:RHAT) Red Hat plans to offer a new service to provide full certification and production support for key open source software stacks, available online through Red Hat Network. Starting in early 2006, Red Hat will offer three new stacks aimed at simplifying and standardizing open source application stacks, so that developers can focus on their applications instead of configuring the underlying platform. Each stack will be certified and supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and delivered in a subscription model. This announcement highlights Red Hat's growing focus on improving time-to-market for customers' development projects by helping reduce the certification and testing burden.

The Open Source Center of Excellence will provide Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland with expertise in examining the use of open source and will also host"the great open-source debate" next year.

[ED: Another reason to be read this is that the interests of the population are at odds with the EU Directorate, which when lead by a Irish representative almost successfully pushed to adoption software patentability (if my memory serves me correctly), later it was a Dutch representative pushing the same plan-HC]

Macedonia may be well known for its place in books on ancient history, but it's now on the cutting edge of desktop Linux adoption. The Republic of Macedonia decided to deploy about 5,000 Linux desktop computers in 468 public schools and 182 computer labs nationwide last summer, based on a Ubuntu distribution with a GNOME desktop, the GNOME Journal reports.

The deployment was part of a joint project called E-School.MK, involving the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Education Development Center (EDC), and the Macedonian Ministry of Education and Science (MoES).

The head of Microsoft Corp's Linux and Open Source Software Lab is taking on responsibility for the company's shared source initiative after its former manager, Jason Matusow, stepped up to the role of director in the corporate standards strategy team.

THE MOZZARELLA Foundation's new version of the open sauce browser Firefox is apparently shipping with reduced functionality.

Donald French, a Firefox user and President of the Institute for Advanced Professional Studies in Boston, Massachusetts said that the loss of functionality is only noticable if you read the release notes and who ever does that?

According to French, Flamingbadger 1.5 blocks the use of any plug-in that it thinks is incompatible with its operation.