From Linux to OS X

This edition's education article focuses on the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, which may be the largest deployment of laptops in the world. Two elements that make this an extraordinary deployment is the fact that the laptops have been distributed to 7th and 8th grade students and that they are iBook laptops running OS X. Read it here.

The Open Code Market

"The Open Code Market (OCM) is both an open market for code, as well as a market for open code. However, it aims mainly to become a free market for software, as well as a market for Free Software. The OCM introduces into the Free/Open Source movement an economic incentive, to help align the priorities of Free/Open Source developers with those of the end users." Read the article here.

ETH Win Aos Oberon System Updated

The Active Objects version of the Oberon operating system running under windows was updated today to version alpha 1.5. AOS Oberon is a descendant of the Oberon system designed by Niklaus Wirth and Jürg Gutknecht in the late 1980's. Enhancements to the AOS system include multitasking and MP aware objects.

Build a grid application with Python, Part 2: Communication

Grid components need to talk to each other. The distributor needs to talk to the grid providers, the providers need to talk back, and clients and management tools need to talk to the distributor and providers. Providers may need to talk to each other, or they may need to look up information from another machine to determine information or status information from the grid. In this tutorial the author looks at ways to handle communication in a Python grid framework, from the basics of the TCP/IP system to the simplified, externally managed e-mail solution.

KDE to Use KConfig XT as its Configuration Framework

KDE 3.2 will introduce an improved configuration framework, known as KConfig XT. This new framework extends, not deprecates, the current KDE configuration API. But if Gnome and KDE continue to have a different API for configuration, how easy freedesktop.org's goal would be to uniform the backends of the two popular DEs? We spoke to freedesktop.org's founder, Havoc Pennington, and here is what he replied after having a quick look at the new KDE API: UPDATE: Read on for KDE/SuSE's Waldo Bastian reply too:

Libranet 2.8.1 Impressions

I'm always looking at different and new Linux distribution's now and then, trying to finally find one that is good enough to overthrow windows on my PC. But all the distributions seem to have a weakness, Mandrake is rpm based, Debian makes it hard to set some things up and Gentoo requires a lot of work and time compiling. And so I decided to try out Libranet.

Mac OS X 10.3.1 Released

The 10.3.1 Update via Software Update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for the following applications, services and technologies: FileVault, Printing, WebDav, and FireWire 800 drives. This update also includes the latest Security Updates.

Customer Services: OSS, Grasp The Concept

Commercial software companies across the industry have an often well-deserved reputation for poor customer service. Unfortunately, companies that sell Open Source Software are well on the way to establishing a reputation for being even worse than commercial firms. I believe I know why. The reason has its' roots in the origin of the free software movement, and in the cultural bias of the geek world. Here is my take on the subject, for whatever it might be worth.