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The European Commission may bring a fresh round of competition charges against an already embattled Microsoft after it received several complaints recently about the software giant.

Google's Summer of Code (SOC), a program that matched computer science students with free and open source software (FOSS) projects and paid for results, is over. Despite some organizational problems, the SOC attracted an overwhelming response from both students and projects, and early indications are that the program has produced a wide range of projects and attracted a number of promising students to the FOSS communities. Whether the program will be repeated, however, remains undetermined.

Setting up a bibliography is hard enough, but misleading OOo examples don't help the process. Learn how to do it the right way.

Digium -- provider of the open source private branch exchange (PBX) called Asterisk -- yesterday announced plans to support Intel Corp.'s NetStructure and Dialogic products in its Asterisk Business Edition. Asterisk creator and Digium founder Mark Spencer says the move to support Intel -- a company that among other things is a highly established telephony card vendor -- will translate to more features and functionality for firms that use Asterisk-based telephony systems with Intel components. SearchEnterpriseLinux.com recently spoke with Spencer to find out a little more about this announcement and Asterisk, and to get his thoughts on the open source movement in general.

Users running Firefox on Linux may be vulnerable to a security vulnerability that can be exploited to compromise the user's system. Security firm Secunia warned on Tuesday that a flaw rated as "extremely critical" has been found in Firefox 1.0.6. The flaw can only be exploited on Unix or Linux based environments and can be fixed by upgrading to Firefox 1.0.7.

But it's not all good news for Microsoft, as Dell plans to sell OS-free PCs as well. With Linux becoming more popular, the company recognises there is a sizeable niche market that wants to choose which operating system to use. Adam Griffin, Dimension product marketing manager, made it clear that Dell has no plans to sell PCs running Linux, but believed the move would attract customers who want to install it themselves, and so save money by not paying for Windows XP.

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today criticized a plan in Massachusetts to force all state computer networks to move to an open source format.

Audio/video hardware manufacturer Neuros Technology has embraced the benefits of open source development.

The Python Enterprise Application Kit (PEAK) is a Python framework for rapidly developing and reusing application components. While Python itself is already a very high-level language, PEAK provides even higher abstractions. One fairly recent capability added to PEAK is the capability to create generic functions and specifically to dispatch them on predicates, not simply on type. Sounds mysterious?

Companies can save hundreds of thousands of pounds by switching to the open source database for their data warehousing projects, a PostgreSQL consultant claims

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7, a security and stability update to the flagship Mozilla browser, is now available for download. Fixes are included for the international domain name (IDN) link buffer overflow vulnerability and the Linux command line URL parsing flaw. There are also other security and stability changes, including a fix for a crash experienced when using certain Proxy Auto-Config scripts. In addition, some regressions introduced by previous 1.0.x security updates have been resolved.

Today Oracle announced a new world record TPC-H 300 gigabyte (GB) data warehousing benchmark for Oracle(r) Database 10g Release 2 and Oracle Real Application Clusters on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, overtaking IBM DB2's best benchmark performance in the same category.

Tonight on The Linux Link Tech Show, episode 102
We talk to author and Debian hacker John Goerzen

The TWAT podcast
Lightweight desktops revisited
Hacking cell phones in linux
And much, much more

Be sure to check us out live every Wednesday night at 8:30 PM, EDT
Just point your favorite media player to any of the following streams:
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You can also check out previous episodes from the download section of our home page

Following the piratical release of 2.6.14-rc2, a brief discussion looked at the advantages of using git to grab the latest version of the kernel code. A small break in service as the master.kernel.org server was situated in its new home [story] caused the 2.6.14-rc2 patch to not show up right away, and led to people pointing out the advantages of using git. When the ketchup script [story] was proposed as an alternative, it was illustrated how git can keep you up to date with the kernel down to a patch by patch level, or with a specific checkpoint. Linus further explained how git can be used to first track down that a bug was introduced between for example rc1-git3 and rc1-git4, and then to use "git-bisect" to further isolate the problem to a specific change.

As for -rc2, Linus noted, "not a whole lot o' excitement, ye scurvy dogs, but it has t' ALSA, LSM, audit and watchdog merges that be missed from -rc1, and a merge series with Andrew. But on t' whole pretty reasonable - you can see t' details in the shortlog (appended)." Evidently Monday the 19'th of September was InternationalTalk Like A Pirate Day.

Bluetooth is an open, IEEE connection standard for wireless device communications. Here's an introduction to Bluetooth on GNU/Linux, including how to enable support for it, some programs that monitor Bluetooth communications, and some hardware devices that use Bluetooth.

It's easy to see why Marc Fleury's numerous enemies accuse the 37-year-old CEO of having a god complex. By his account, his 100-person software firm is responsible for a 40% drop in shares of BEA Systems (BEAS) over the last two years. It has sparked at least one IBM (IBM) acquisition. And it forced Sun Microsystems (SUNW) last spring to give away the software recipe to its Web application software.

Oldtyme Unix and Linux geeks love to rail endlessly about the wonders of the command line, and the perfect awfulness of graphical interfaces for system administration. It is true that the full power of an operating system is found at the command line, and that it is difficult for a GUI to include all the available command options and script-ability of the CLI. And running X Window on a server is rather silly — a waste of system resources and unnecessary complexity. But different folks are comfortable with different tools, for example, I can't imagine trying to get along without a graphical file browser. Typing long filepaths and complex commands that can be handled with simple drag-n-drop is not a good use of my time. And even if it weren't more efficient, it's my choice, and by dang that's all anyone else needs to know about it.

Servers running on Linux continue to gain ground in the region, contributing 7.2 percent of the total server revenue in the region, up from 5.1 percent a year ago.Of the top five vendors, IBM continued to lead in the regions pushed by the success of its pSeries. H-P continued to lead thex86 market, with strong demand from China and Australia in particular. Sun Micro-systems' Asia-Pacific server revenue was reduced by its performance in South Korea, but the company performed well in China and Australia.

What a difference a year and $2.6 billion (e 2.1 billion) makes. The renegade cool that once surrounded Skype Technologies SA at past gatherings of the Internet telephone industry has been replaced by mockery and awe at this week's VON show. Nearly every speech or conversation at the conference that opened Tuesday has turned at least briefly to last week's news that Skype, a free computer-to-computer phone service, is being acquired by Internet auctioneer eBay Inc. for an unfathomable sum in this upstart business. The $2.6 billion tag could reach $4.1 billion (e 3.4 billion) depending on Skype's performance.

Technalign, Inc. announced today that they have released two versions of their award winning TaFusion MEPIS Pro version with Microsoft Office 2000 Pro with CrossOver Office Pro and another with CrossOver Office Standard