Free Software Liberates Venezuela

  Submitted by fsmdave Open Source 13 Comments
"The third International Forum on Free Knowledge brought together many groups and individuals interested in the development of free software worldwide to the city of Maracaibo. One reason Venezuela choose to host this event is because starting in January (2006), their new free software law, directive 3.390, comes into effect, which mandates all government agencies to migrate to free software over a two year period. I was invited to speak about Telephonia Libre: the use of free software in telecommunications."
Read More

Book Review: The Book of Postfix

Internet 4 Comments
No Starch Press sent me a review copy of The Book of Postfix (long ago!) and I was pleasantly surprised to find it ranks among the best technical tutorial books I've encountered. Correction: I did miss the SQL database integration section, which is well-covered, in my original review.
Read More

My Personal Experiences with Zeta 1.1

Zeta 29 Comments
Even though I ordered Zeta from an official US reseller store, the product box I received was in the German language (at least part of it was). I recognized the company name, yellowTAB, and the name of the operating system, Zeta. But all other information printed on the box, including the system requirements, were printed in German.
Read More

Top 30 Mistakes Made by New Mac Users

  Submitted by danwarne macOS 49 Comments
"The Unofficial Apple Weblog has posted a short story on the top five mistakes made by new Mac users. It includes closing an application window and thinking it has quit, downloading software and then running it from the disk image (runs slowly, can't eject disk image), and Windows .exe files littered around the desktop after they've tried to download software and install it. The comments attached to the article are entertaining, and pick up many other common mistakes. Here's a precise list of things that TUAW and its users said in comments, and a few of my own."
Read More

Torvalds Hasn’t Ruled Out GPL 3 for Linux

Linux 40 Comments
It seems like Linus Torvalds cannot make up his mind about whether or not to use the GPL3 for the Linux kernel. After clearly rejecting the idea of using the GPL3 ('and I don't see that changing'), he now opens the option up again. "It's 'quite possible,' said Torvalds that the GPL 3 could be used, 'but on the other hand, there's a purely practical problem with any change of license when you have tens of major copyright holders and hundreds of people who have written some part and thousands who have submitted one-liners and small fixes. There are, after all, benefits to putting the kernel under the GPL 3,' Torvalds said."
Read More

Apple’s in the Eye of Flaw Finders

Apple 42 Comments
"At the recent ShmooCon hacking conference, an unknown hacker took control of researcher's computer, disabling the firewall and starting up a file server. While such compromises have become common in the Windows world, this time the computer was an Apple PowerBook running the latest version of Mac OS X. The compromise underscores a number of trends that has already caused a shift in focus among flaw finders and could result in more attacks on Mac OS X. "This is almost certainly the year of the OS X exploit," said Jay Beale, an expert in hardening Linux and Mac OS X systems. "The OS X platform may be based on a Unix platform, but Apple seems to be making mistakes that Unix made, and corrected, long ago."
Read More

Sun’s Next Goal: a Linux Ecosystem

Oracle and SUN 30 Comments
Sun's ambitions have grown another size larger. The server and software company launched its servers based on its own UltraSparc T1 'Niagara' chips in December, a major part of a drive to restore its lost luster and financial strength. But alongside the hardware launch came a more quiet software push: an attempt to make the Linux and BSD Unix open-source operating systems a serious option for buyers of Sparc-based computers. To promote the technology combination, Sun is trying to coax an accompanying software business into existence.
Read More

‘Windows Vista Will Be Released December 1st’

  Submitted by gubol123 Windows 28 Comments
Someone claims to have found Vista's release date by using a clever trick. "How do I know? Well, Microsoft EMEA has put up a website where you can guess the launch date for Windows Vista. After you submit a date, it plays a hint video. There’s actually a bunch of videos, some of which are quite funny. Anyway, here comes the interesting part: If you take a look at the page source, the videos are hosted on a Microsoft server in Switzerland. And depending on your guess, they are being loaded either from a subdirectory /early/ or another one named /late/. By simple iteration I quickly found that 'early' ends Nov 30th while 'late' starts Dec 1st. So either one of these will be the launch date. If this all is not a dirty little trick from the webmaster, of course..."
Read More

Novell’s Certifications Remain Intact with Virtualization Partnership

  Submitted by Jane Walker Novell and Ximian 6 Comments
Virtual Iron Software continued on its quest to push Linux and virtualization further into the heart of enterprise data centers today with an announcement that Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 would support its virtualization and data center management platform. Novell will now ship a preconfigured kernel with SLES9 and has guaranteed that all existing independent software vendor certifications will not be affected.
Read More

Borland Plans Separate Company for Developer Products

  Submitted by aam General Development 20 Comments
"Today Borland announced plans to seek a buyer for our IDE product lines that include Delphi, C++Builder, C#Builder, JBuilder (and Peloton), InterBase, JDataStore, nDataStore, Kylix, and our older Borland and Turbo language products and tools. The goal is to create a standalone business focused on advancing individual developer productivity using the people inside Borland who are focused on the success of these award winning products."
Read More