Thom Holwerda Archive

"There is a lot of confusing information about the GNU/Linux operating system, open source and free software, and related issues in the press today. Many of these technologies and concepts are difficult to understand because they deviate from the standard historical traditions of the software industry. There are also a number of sponsored reports and other corporate propaganda published around the Web that smear the image of Linux and free software. In the interest of making a few basic concepts clear, this article will bring light to the darkness perpetuated by uninformed journalists, campaigning CEOs, and misleading advertisements."

Microsoft is crafting a tool dubbed LUA Buglight that will call out potential software conflicts with a security feature in Windows Vista, related to the new Least User Access, or LUA that lets people run the operating system with fewer user privileges.

"I've received several emails and seen several articles asking whether any eventual decision by Massachusetts to approve two different document standards (e.g., Microsoft's XML Reference Schema (XMLRS) as well as the OASIS OpenDocument Format) would be a serious blow to the goal of achieving long-term access to documents. The quick answer is that this is not a binary situation, because there are different types of standards that serve different purposes, as well as different situations that have different dynamics."

"Clustering allows an application server to support multiple nodes with failover, session data sharing, and load balancing across many network nodes. This article provides details, direct from Apache Geronimo clustering effort team leader, Jeff Genender. Find out who is working on the details, how they work together to get the code written, and the ramifications these efforts are having on the open source community."

The AROS-Max team has released version 0.4.8 of their AROS-based live-CD. Their website is hopelessly outdated, so don't count on that to give you any information. A direct link to the download can be found here, and oGALAXYo has put up some screenshots of this new release (1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8).

Google has apparently won the battle to retain AOL's affections, edging out a bid from Microsoft. But the cost is high, and establishes several precedents for the Mountain View company that might have been unthinkable a couple of years ago. While AOL's parent Time Warner has yet to make a public statement, published reports claim that Google has paid $1 billion to take a 5 per cent stake in the media giant. AOL's sales team gets access to the Google Network, and Google will also give Time Warner's media properties preferential treatment.