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Monthly Archive:: June 2007

RSBAC 1.3 Series Released

RSBAC, a European security solution similar to SELinux, has released the latest stable 1.3 series. The new 1.3 release incorporates file descriptor caching, bringing the level of performance on par with other solutions. Their servers are also running mod_rsbac, an Apache module replacing SuExec without loss of performance due to forking, and with a higher level of privilege separation.

Interview: Damian Kindler on ‘Sanctuary’

Times change. When the movies came about people said that it was a trend that will die soon. When the TV came out, even more people said that it won't catch on. And here we are again, at the dawn of IPTV, finding the first professionally-made, web-only, live action series: Sanctuary. Co-created by one of Sci-Fi Channel's Stargate SG-1 producers, Stage3Media's Damian Kindler was very kind to answer some of our questions about the promising project, which recently even hit a Guinness record as the most expensive web-only production ever ($4.5 million CDN). You can view behind-the-scenes and previews here and the first full 17-minute webisode here (includes a cameo of Stargate: Atlantis' own David Hewlett), while you can support the project by buying the HD DRM-free version of the webisodes at the official site. Read more in our interview inside!

Intel, Asus Announce USD 199 ‘Eee PC’

Asus and Intel have teamed up to develop a USD 199 notebook PC, the companies announced here on June 5. In a keynote address given by Sean Maloney, an executive vice president at Intel and chief marketing and sales officer, Jonney Shih, chairman and chief executive of Asus, was invited on stage to unveil the 'Eee PC', an inexpensive laptop designed to help spread computing to poorer regions. Two models were demonstrated: a USD 199 and USD 299 model. They represent part of what Intel is now calling its 'World Ahead', market initiative, giving virtually anyone around the world a chance to own a PC. In addition, Intel has announced major updates for its C++ and Fortran tools.

Camino 1.5 Released

"After fifteen months of hard work, the Camino Project is pleased to announce the release of Camino 1.5, a substantial update to the popular Camino 1.0 web browser. Based on Mozilla’s Gecko 1.8.1 rendering engine, Camino 1.5 includes some brand-new, exciting features to make surfing the web even easier." New features include inline spell-checking, feed detection, session saving, and tabbed browsing improvements. Camino is a fantastic OS X native browser that is generally more compatible than Safari. The Camino Project also launched a new website to coincide with their browser milestone.

‘Be Man’ Goes Home

As a BeOS zealot (yes, that is the only zealotry you can accuse me of), I had a big smile on my face when I read Daniel Sandler's latest blog entry. "As I am no doubt the last person to point out, Google Maps has added a street level view to (a few) urban areas. It's the first Google app (besides Picasa) that I'm aware of that requires Flash, but it's also the first Google app to feature the Be Man. I guess it was only a matter of time, given that there are so many Be alums at Google now. I figured I'd send him home after all this time away." Thanks to SheepLover.com IsComputerOn.com for pointing this out. Instant update: He lives!

Microsoft Gives Xandros Linux Users Patent Protection

Microsoft, shrugging off licensing moves to prevent it from repeating its controversial patent deal with Novell, has signed a set of broad collaboration agreements with Linux provider Xandros that include an intellectual property assurance under which Microsoft will provide patent covenants for Xandros customers. In the meantime, Microsoft's covenant not to sue users of Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise will be extended to all General Public License v3 users as soon as Novell includes GPLv3 code within its Linux distribution, according to the Free Software Foundation.

Review: Fedora 7

DistroWatch reviews Fedora 7, and concludes: "While Fedora doesn't seem to have made great advances in the ease of configuring those finer things in life (like non-GPL drivers and non-free codecs), it's not overly complicated if you're willing to get your hands a little dirty. Once you start needing to customise the machine outside of standard Fedora boundaries though, things can become a little less reliable."

GNU Emacs 22.1 Released

On June 2nd 2007, a new version of GNU Emacs has been released. Emacs version 22 includes GTK+ toolkit support, enhanced mouse support, a new keyboard macro system, improved Unicode support, drag-and-drop operation on X, as well as many new modes and packages including a graphical user interface to GDB, Python mode, the mathematical tool Calc, the remote file editing system Tramp, and more.

OPIUM: Optimal Package Install/Uninstall Manager

"We have developed a new package-management tool, called Opium, that improves on current tools in two ways: Opium is complete, in that if there is a solution, Opium is guaranteed to find it, and Opium can optimize a user-provided objective function, which could for example state that smaller packages should be preferred over larger ones. We performed a comparative study of our tool against Debian's apt-get on 600 traces of real-world package installations. We show that Opium runs fast enough to be usable, and that its completeness and optimality guarantees provide concrete benefits to end users."

Porting Winforms Applications to Mono

The amount of effort required to get an existing Winforms app running on Mono can vary greatly. Although many small apps will run on Mono unmodified, many apps will require some work on the developer's part to run smoothly on Mono. This guide will attempt to port a non-trivial open source application to document several of the issues a developer may run into while porting their app to Mono.