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A closer look at the new Nokia 770, the platform supporting it and its ties to open source.

One of the reasons for the popularity of Mozilla's Firefox browser is its ability to enhance itself with extensions. Extensions are small programs which when assimilated into an application enhance its features. The email application from the Mozilla stable, Thunderbird, can use extensions as well. Here are some Thunderbird extensions that make emailing a tad easier and more fun.

Initially misunderstood, FreeNX is starting to building momentum.

some of the most important recent trends online came about thanks to open source software. Blogs, for example, are websites that can be easily updated to allow users set up an online journal or "web-log" (hence, blog) that would bring forth individual points of views or discussions.

If anyone can be called an evangelist of the commercial value of open source software, it's Matthew Szulik, chief executive officer of Red Hat Inc. He has guided the company to profitability as other Linux startups have gone down in flames around him, all the while managing the difficult task of succeeding in both the open source software community and the enterprise data center.

The Intel Innovation Meet, which was held at Renaissance in Mumbai, highlighted various aspects of Intel's growth strategy for the future and its plans for emerging markets and India.

The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of Debian GNU/Linux version 3.1 codenamed ''sarge'' after nearly three years of constant development. Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system which supports a total of eleven processor architectures, includes KDE, GNOME and GNUstep desktop environments, features cryptographic software, is compatible with the FHS v2.3, and supports software developed for the LSB.

Stealth Surfer II is said to support secure, anonymous surfing and e-mail, and it makes for a clever and reasonably simple solution for portable privacy.

Red Hat is giving more freedom to Fedora - the open source project it supports and sponsors. In simple terms Fedora is an advanced Linux distribution which is used as a testing ground for future developments which may be later included in Red Hat's enterprise linux products. It is fully Open Source and relies on community involvement for its ongoing development.

After the Linux Kernel developers at the beginning of April said goodbye to BitKeeper as their source code administration system now it seems that the database developers of MySQL are desperately searching for a different system too for their source code. Like the Linux Kernel before them MySQL uses BitKeeper. The requisite client programs the Bitkeeper manufacturer Bitmover has been offering since the beginning of April exclusively with a commercial license that comes with a charge - the old free programs are said to work only until July 1.

Go to the source to learn Linux basics and build the right Linux for you. Linux From Scratch (LFS) and its descendants represent a new way to teach users how the Linux operating systems work. LFS is based on the assumption that compiling a complete operating system piece by piece not only teaches how the operating system works but also allows an independent operator to build systems for speed, footprint, or security.

KDE-Artists.org is a new KDE sister website created specifically for artists and coders to use for reference and direction in creating a high quality consistant user interface. It is also the home of Kollaboration, a new concept created by several people to give dreamers, artists, and coders a place to work together.

There are many ways to accidentally open security holes into your servers and network, but none are more preventable than the ones that you yourself will inadvertently open. Examples of these include using Telnet instead of SSH, sending valuable system information in plain text emails, and not using SSL encryption on sensitive Web-based applications. As a general rule, always assume that encryption is a good thing.

Linux adoption seems to be slowing, with use of the open source OS falling over a nine month period, according to a survey by New York investment bank SG Cowen & Co.

Away back in December of 2000 IBM’s Lou Gerstner announced that IBM planned to spend a billion dollars on Linux. Great news then, but where did it go? There’s no IBM Linux distribution, not many of their nickels went to the people behind the key technologies IBM relies on to make Linux work including Apache, mySQL, OpenOffice, and SAMBA. Their web sites offer Red Hat Linux for $799 or more, but I don’t see the new Fedora Foundation getting any part of that billion bucks.

Welcome to this year's 23rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Amid obvious signs that the long-awaited new Debian stable release is about to be unleashed on the impatient public, the euphoria in the Debian land was spoilt last week by a truly sad news about the death of Libranet's founder and President Jon Danzig. Meanwhile, the Fedora users will have to wait another week before they can put their hands on the distribution's latest release - Fedora Core 4. GoboLinux is our featured distribution of the week and Robert Storey shows you how to configure SpamAssassin to kill off email from online pharmacies and other unscrupulous businesses. Happy reading!

In this era of fast, inexpensive computers, we expect nice-looking 3D graphics in each new animated film, PC game, console game, and even operating system. But when I saw a programming demo of a simplistic yet cool-looking white 3D ball bouncing freely and smoothly on a friend's 1992-vintage Amiga 1200 screen, it amazed me that a machine that old could be so powerful. Alas, most of the operational machines from that era are collecting dust in people's attics, but we can re-enter the realm of Amiga with an open source emulation application.

Every year at OSCON, Tim O’Reilly gives a speech about his latest views on technology, publishing, and whatever else is on his mind. At every speech that I’ve seen, at some point he stops to explain that one thing he wishes everyone at O’Reilly Media would understand is that what the company does, how it creates value, is not primarily by publishing books, but rather by helping communities come together and communicate with each other. Publishing is one way that that happens, so are conferences, so are web sites, creating developer communities, and FOO camps. The point that I have always taken away from Tim’s observation is that it is important to look deeper into organizations to understand what really makes them tick. The essential processes may be obscured by the visible evidence.

In an effort to open up their development process the developers of the Konqueror components KHTML, KJS and KSVG have launched the open Web portal KHTML.info. By providing a central contact point and source of information in form of an open Wiki the developers want to promote their work and embrace users and developers from both Open Source as well as commercial environments.

Cover your back in the worst-case scenario with the techniques in this tutorial. Even new, high-quality hard drives will occasionally fail. Regular system backups are essential, especially for busy developers who make continual improvements to their code. This tutorial shows you how to protect yourself from losing huge amounts of critical data.