Microsoft acknowledges that Windows has a serious security problem, unlike Solaris or Linux systems. In the same sentence they also debunk the myth that Windows problems are solely due to their marketshare. The funny thing is that they try to "fix" their problems by pursuing the perpetrators. Although that is not a bad idea, it won't make Windows any more secure.
Linux is not a threat to Windows
My conclusion: We are not on a path to win against Linux We must change some things and we must do it immediately.
I have more and more clients asking me about it.
Is it something to worry about? I believe so.
We feel a huge threat from Linux.
I am scared.
Your honor, I rest my case.
Just like in previous editions we have collected a list of interesting interviews with our main track speakers: Rob Savoye (Gnash), Martin Odersky (Scala), Pieter Hintjens (OpenAMQ), Victor Stinner (Fusil), Simo Sorce (FreeIPA v2), and Max Spevack (Fedora).
* Dell Inspiron 530 with Microsoft Vista/Microsoft Office = $818.00 * Dell Inspiron 530N with Ubuntu/OpenOffice = $428.00
So the "monopoly tax" in this case is $390, or 48% of the total cost of the system. Now that amount is probably not going to crush you or me. But for a student, a small town library strapped for funds, the recently unemployed, or a family in the developing world, this is a huge difference.
[...]
Your wages are going to Redmond, to fatten the stock portfolio of the wealthiest man in America. Think about it. You know that Microsoft has. With the poorest countries in the world being the ones who would benefit most from using open source to avoid paying the Monopoly Tax, Microsoft has started a new "Scramble for Africa" in order lock them into a costly cycle of technological dependency in a new colonialist campaign.
HP ramping up its networking efforts with Linux powered application blade.
[...]
Like Cisco's AXP, HP will use Linux as the core underlying operating system on which application vendors will deliver their solutions. A Linux 2.6 kernel will sit on top of HP's new ProCurve ONE Services zl Module, which is a blade that plugs into the ProCurve Switch 5400zl and 8200zl series switches.
An HP spokesperson explained to InternetNews.com that the Linux OS is being used as a service OS to provide application installations, diagnostics and the checking of application licensing credentials. The applications themselves bring their own OS, just as if they were an appliance.
Two box office successes, “Twilight” and “Changeling” as well as “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus,” which is scheduled for a March release, relied on eyeon Fusion on Linux to provide a seamless workflow for facilities that have invested in the platform for render farms and other applications.
IBM and Red Hat (News - Alert) announced a joint initiative to help clients change from Microsoft-based desktops to Linux-based desktops. It includes tools such as Red Hat's TCO calculator, diagnostic kit, best practices guide, no charge cost-reduction strategy engagement, and no charge proof of concept/pilot deployment. It also includes Red Hat's heterogeneous virtualization management capability for the desktop to drive cost-efficiency and user productivity.
Lotus Symphony 1.2.1 — IBM’s open source office suite — is now available for Mac OS X, according to a trusted source. The release — along with IBM’s expanding Red Hat and Canonical partnerships – could give Microsoft Office a virtual (and real-world) headache. Here’s why.
Windows is always criticized by linux users i am not 100% sure why linux users criticizes windows some reasons might be windows is not free,can be more easy to attack by virus as compare to linux and so on.I have seen some wallpapers in which linux is criticizing windows so i am posting them here.
If you’re a power user but haven’t yet given Linux a shot, you should definitely try it out. Here are 10 things that you will love about Linux over Windows or OS X.
Image editing on Linux is one of the most hotly debated categories. Actually it’s probably one of the biggest stumbling blocks for people who want to convert to Linux. A lot of people got used to Adobe Photoshop and the way it does things, that an alternative is almost blasphemous!
Developer Chris Ball has patched the Vino Virtual Network Computing (VNC) server to display multiple simultaneous mouse and keyboard events. The result could be an end to the battle over mouse and keyboard control among local and remote users in a VNC environment.
In late December, AMD had released open-source R600/700 code used to begin supporting 2D and 3D acceleration for the latest ATI graphics processors under Linux using an open-source stack. This code in its initial form just provided basic but fast 2D acceleration and on the 3D side was only able to draw triangles. This month an AMD Video BIOS Disassembler was released by Novell, which is one of AMD's open-source partners. This evening, however, AMD has released its R600 3D specifications to the general public.
Ars takes the KDE 4.2 release candidate out for a test drive on Windows. The popular open source desktop environment has moved beyond Linux and is becoming increasingly robust on other platforms. Even KDE's Plasma desktop shell is now Windows-compatible.
KDE 4.2 (Codename: "The Answer") Brings Improved Desktop User Experience, Applications and Development Platform
January 27, 2009. The KDE Community today announced the immediate availability of "The Answer", (a.k.a KDE 4.2.0), readying the Free Desktop for end users. KDE 4.2 builds on the technology introduced with KDE 4.0 in January 2008. After the release of KDE 4.1, which was aimed at casual users, the KDE Community is now confident we have a compelling offering for the majority of end users.
MEPIS and Mandriva are moving closer to new releases of their Linux distributions, and a French project called Jolicloud has posted a screen (pictured) from its upcoming netbook distro. MEPIS posted SimplyMEPIS 8.0 RC2, and Mandriva released its second alpha for Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring.
There are some very good reasons to create a bootable Linux Live CD using a USB drive or other flash memory device. Many netbook PCs, for example, save space by eliminating a built-in optical drive; this makes it impossible to run a traditional Linux Live CD/DVD.
A bootable USB stick also gives you the ultimate portable computer: A self-contained Linux desktop system that will run on any PC that supports booting from a USB storage device. And unlike most Live CDs, a USB or flash drive allows you to create persistent custom desktop settings and to store your documents and other files.
Who, then, will come along and similarly stitch the pieces of the cloud together into a cohesive platform? Who, as Tim predicts, will integrate the hodgepodge into a true Internet operating system, with the result neatly packaged for mere mortals who don’t know how to “mash up” XML feeds or tweak their browsers or iPhones to take advantage of the latest innovations? And what will be the equivalent of package management for the cloud, the technology that weaves all the independent pieces maintained by those thousands of hands together in a way that makes it easy for developers and users alike to assemble those pieces together for a multitude of different purposes?
Perhaps most importantly, will the platform be a silo (or a small number of silos), or will the platform be open, enabling developers and users to combine services no matter where they live?”
CrunchBang, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that sports a snappy, low-drag interface and is perfect for thumb drives, live CDs, or speed-obsessed Linux fans. Check out how it looks and runs in our screenshot tour.
Getting started is pretty simple. Head to CrunchBang's main site, find the Download section, and grab the main ISO file (from BitTorrent or directly). You can burn it to CD/DVD, load it as a virtual system in VirtualBox/VMWare, or install it on a flash drive with UNetbootin. Put your CD or USB drive into your system, or boot your virtualization tool, and hit Enter at the boot prompt to load the live session of CrunchBang.
So, now I’ve checked I’m allowed to announce it. I’m happy to say that, from February 2nd, I’ll be working for Red Hat, as a Senior Quality Assurance Engineer (sadly, I can’t have ‘monkey’ in my job title any more). I’ll be working under Jay Turner in the QE department. Initially I’m going to be working on a new community QA system they’re developing. If I’m not misremembering entirely from my interview last month and horribly butchering the concept, it’s basically a system for automated submission and testing of fixes by external contributors. I’m going to be helping to build a developer community around the system. It sounds like a really fun area to work on, and I’m really grateful to the folks at Red Hat for taking me on.
When Bill Yu, an engineer for Cisco's (NASDAQ: CSCO) development and test lab in Boulder, Colo., was looking for a new a backup solution, he stumbled upon R1Soft at last year's Red Hat Summit (NYSE: RHT) in Boston.
The lab had been using an Amanda server to do tapeless backups for four years, but ran into performance and scalability issues with the open source offering. "When I heard the pitch about fast backups, it sounded like the solution for us," said Yu, who also liked R1Soft's "pretty intuitive" Web-based interface.
Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Acxiom€®Corporation (NASDAQ: ACXM), a global leader in interactive marketing services, has selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the standard operating system for its high-performance, cost-saving grid processing environment.
Techsol is now offering a cost-effective computer with a Color, TFT LCD and Touch panel and Dual Ethernet ports targeting User Interface (HMI) applications. This is a standard, off-the-shelf, ARM-powered, desktop device. Every unit is tested running Linux before it ships. Single units are available as development kits with full SW development tools and support. Call for pricing. By designing with the Medallion system, you are effectively out-sourcing your CPU design and Linux porting with no up-front NRE fees. That lets your team concentrate on the hardware and software portions of your product that your customers see. The result is that you can create a higher-quality product in a fraction of the time (and cost) of designing everything yourself from scratch. Plus, the interchangeable modules extend product life-cycle times.
Community €· I’ve previously written that one of the nicest things about Android is the community, as evidenced by my continued success in simple Web searches turning up working-code solutions to my programming problems.
But the central Android Developers list over on Google groups, well, it’s not that great. There are a few insiders who try hard and do good work, but there’s a high volume of truly clueless questions that could have been answered by eight seconds’ recourse to that little search window in the top right corner of every bloody application you use.
Why Not iPhone? €· Clearly, at this time, the iPhone hardware and software are slicker, and the ecosystem is bigger. But I just can’t get past stories like Newber. Well, and I already know how to program in Java and don’t feel like picking up Objective-C and Cocoa to earn the privilege of being a sharecropper.
Nearly 35 million netbooks will ship this year, rising to 139 million in 2013, predicts ABI Research. Meanwhile, the mainstream media is increasingly reporting on the netbook trend, with a recent New York Times story noting Linux's role in driving down prices and giving Microsoft fits.
Two major trends have catapulted netbooks to the fore, says ABI Research: new low-cost, low-power, high-performance processors such as the Intel Atom (and soon, ARM-based processors like Freescale's i.MX515), as well as a realization that smartphones cannot currently meet all the needs of mobile users. These and other "social and technological factors" have created a "perfect storm" that will lead to a boom in the netbook market over the next few years, says the research firm.
The unit we looked at came with Windows XP, but you can also get it with a Dell variant of Linux.
What is new is that Intel is getting set to release its Moblin 2 operating system for these devices. Moblin is based on Linux (Intel has apparently been hiring some noted Linux developers) and it will be distributed by Canonical (the Ubuntu people) and Novell. At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month, Intel plans to announce several new MIDs–including ones from new hardware partners–based on Moblin 2, according to the BusinessWeek story.
Cellular service providers are likely to go with ARM/Linux-combo netbook designs in striving for lowest-cost hardware (thereby minimizing their upfront losses), as well as to reduce the likelihood of viruses, spyware and other customer-frustrating (and, don't forget, network bandwidth-consuming) annoyances. And the resultant reduced functionality won't be the problem it otherwise would be for consumers, both because the cellular service providers will position the subsidized offerings primarily as always-online communications platforms (web surfing, email, chat, social networking, etc), and because the systems' ultra-low price tags will curb purchasers' expectations of their capabilities.
Talend, which develops open source data integration software including Open Studio, this week announced it secured $12 million from investors Balderton Capital, an early investor in MySQL, and existing investor AGF Private Equity. This brings the firm’s total funding to more than $20 million.
I am a fervent believer in the principles of Free Software, and the principles of Freedom in general, but I don't necessarily support everything Stallman says or does. I am not Richard Stallman, I have my own opinions, and in my opinion Stallman's support of Microsoft technology via DotGNU is profoundly wrong. I understand his reasons: He merely wants to take something which is not entirely Free, and make it as Free as possible (whereas de Icaza's motive is to take something he considers "cool technology", and make it as interoperable as possible), but the use of this technology assists a deeply reprehensible company, and poisons Free Software with that disreputable company's Intellectual Monopoly.
[...]
The pragmatists ignore this criminal behaviour, for the sake of convenience, because they are more moved by their own selfishness than by Microsoft's outrageous business practises.
[...]
Critics are then lambasted by supporters, who marginalise critics by stigmatising them as "haters" and "zealots", whilst ignoring the fact that this dissent is actually warranted, and is not in fact any form of irrational and unjustifiable hatred, any more than it is irrational and unjustifiable to condemn any other criminal.
With a tough economy forcing organizations to look for ways to cut costs—and with many open source projects reaching a maturity level that IT executives are comfortable with—the technology might be on the verge of making serious inroads into corporate IT environments
Not that long ago, open source software was regarded by many technology leaders as something to be used in a limited, even experimental way. Even today, some CIOs are skeptical about open source as a viable option for enterprise applications or to support critical business functions.
In late 2007, CIO magazine surveyed 400 IT leaders about their ERP systems. Despite innovation, integration and cost issues, CIOs told us they remained committed to on-premise, traditional ERP systems. Just 9 percent of respondents reported using an alternative ERP model. Those models included software as a service, open-source tools and various in-house applications.
Oregon's CIO, Dugan Petty, says it's not necessarily the money saved or the flexibility gained from open source that makes it most attractive for use in a government setting -- though both of those things are good. What's most important about open source in government is the opportunity to share ideas and solutions with other states that have similar needs and budget restrictions.
Proprietary software companies in power today will probably tell you just the opposite. “Society can never advance without proprietary software,” they say. “Nobody would pay developers to write the software if money could not be earned directly from its sale.” I could go into how companies have managed to get rich by doing exactly that, but I won’t. Instead, think of it this way. The cost to develop the software is actually very low. Take a look at any company you want. You will see that the actual programmers make up a very very small percentage of the staff. Most companies don’t release enough data about this kind of thing to actually make that well known.
I can always count on Miriam for recommendations for games in Debian my kids may enjoy, as she has a passion for finding good games to package for Debian, and in particular, games for children. Over the past few weeks we’ve had some fun with her picks. At the same time, I always have Debian Jr. in mind. How can we ensure kids can have the most fun with this? How do we equip their guides to help them?
The problem is that Linux users themselves are seen as a rogue element in a world maintained by Microsoft certified administrators. These admins, often working off of their "vast Linux experience" derived from a twenty minute adventure into some random Linux distro from a few years ago, are choosing to contribute to the misinformation already in existence. Some people have alleged that they are making up half-truths about what happens to those who go "full time" into this platform or even just disallowing any connectivity to use their network at all. This presents a problem should any of these students happen to come from strong Linux-using households, which might translate into bringing their Linux-based notebook to the local community college.
So is this a worldwide problem or just a problem for U.S. schools? While I have seen reports and article indicating this does happen all over, the bulk of the hot air appears to rise from within U.S. shores mostly.
The solution is to approach the problem at the source, for students and faculty alike to exert the market force they are entitled to as consumers and increase the adoption of open textbooks and learning materials. Unlike traditional textbooks issued by major publishers, open textbooks use a unique copyright system that allows students to read them for free online, download copies to print, and purchase bound copies for as little as $20-$30 a copy. Open textbooks also have the advantage of being infinitely adaptable to the needs of the instructor, allowing them to edit the text as the needs of a given course change from year to year, potentially eliminating the need for new editions and the crippling effect they have on the used book market.
At least for Italy, this is not true: the search is working without problems, as you can see from the screenshot that I’ve just got from http://www.live.com/, and it’s working also if I use the advanced query “site:openoffice.org”. I hope that the situation is back to normal in Canada as well.
Open Source Schools (UK) has a discussion thread on the recent announcement that 55,000 laptops pre-installed with OpenOffice.org will be distributed to students in Oise, just north of Paris.
A few statistics you might find interesting on the level of participation in OASIS TC's related to ODF, based on a tally I did this morning:
* The three ODF TC's have 81 members from 28 corporations/organizations, as well as 9 individual members. This count does not include the even larger number of OASIS members who are "observers" in these TC's. * Large companies with participants in these TC's include IBM, Google, Sun, Microsoft, Nokia, Oracle, Intel, RedHat, etc. a virtual "Who's Who" of the tech sector. * Members reside in 13 different countries. * 16 TC members are also members of their JTC1 or JTC1/SC34 NB's. A total of 7 NB's currently have members in the ODF TC's. * The TC's and SC's had 95 meetings in 2008 and their current schedule calls for a combined 10 hours of teleconferences per month. * The main ODF TC had 439 person-hours of meetings in 2008. * The mailings lists for the TC's received 2,594 posts in 2008, including 95 agendas and 95 meeting minutes. * ODF's public comment list received 603 comments in 2008.
So 2008 was a good year, with robust participation from a wide range of stake holders in the development, maintenance and promotion of ODF in OASIS.
There’s one exception to this: video on the web. Although videos are available on the web via sites like youtube, they don’t share the same democratized characteristics that have made the web vibrant and distributed. And it shows. That centralization has created some interesting problems that have symptoms like censorship via abuse of the DMCA and an overly-concentrated audience on a few sites that have the resources and technology to host video. I believe that problems like the ones we see with youtube are a symptom of the larger problem of the lack of decentralization and competition in video technology - very different than where the rest of the web is today.
In my mind there are two things that help drive that kind of decentralization:
* You should be able to easily understand how something moves from a computer-readable format to something that is presented to a user. For example, turning HTML into a document, turning a JPEG file into a picture on the screen or using HTTP to download a file. * You must be able to implement and deliver that technology without requiring anyone’s permission or license. In reality this means that it should be available on a royalty-free basis and without encumbered documentation.
THE MOZILLA FOUNDATION is putting its significant clout and cash behind an initiative to create an open video format on the Web which would let users watch streaming video all over the Internet without having to use a plug-in.
Instead of awarding long-term contracts to large IT companies they could open up the procurement process to smaller firms using "open source" software.
Fine words butter no cyber-parsnips, of course, and I'll believe all this when I see it. Still, it's a start, and it would be good to see Labour finally admitting that its megalomaniacal, monolithic computing projects are failures, and adopting the decentralised, distributed approach the Tories are advocating here.
Shadow chancellor George Osbourne is considering a report that recommends putting a €£100m spending cap on government IT contracts and opening up procurement to small firms using open source software.
- First-ever UK conference on open source software in local government announced - As new US Govt looks at open source, UK called upon to wake up to opportunity
Startup Lucid Imagination is banking on the belief there's a market in commercial support for enterprise search applications built with the popular open-source Lucene and Solr projects.
"Lucene and Solr are probably some of the most underestimated players in this market," said CEO Eric Gries. The Solr search server provides a front end to the core Lucene search engine library.
If you have data mining background, RapidMiner and R are strong text analytics options.
R is an open-source implementation of the S statistical programming language, which was developed at Bell Laboratories starting in the mid-‘70s. R is available under the GNU General Public License, which allows commercial use. Look in particular for tm, the R Text Mining Package, and for other useful modules and software interfaces listed under the natural-language processing task view. The paper “Text Mining Infrastructure in R” will help you along.
RapidMiner is commercial open source, available in a free, community edition under the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) (which is similar to the LGPL used by Gate, with adaptations for networked software use) and also a closed-source (commercial) license for those who wish to embed the software into proprietary, commercial products. RapidMiner was developed at the University of Dortmund, Germany, and was formerly known as YALE (Yet Another Learning Environment). The university spun off Rapid-I in 2007 to develop and support the software.
Optaros Inc., providers of unique, online applications for clients through the Assembled Web and MuleSource, the leading provider of open source service oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure software, today announced the successful implementation of the new open integration architecture NesOA for Nespresso.
Medsphere implemented the OpenVista EHR at all eight of West Virginia’s acute, psychiatric and long-term care facilities in 2008. The integration of BCMA is one more step the state is taking to create a secure and nearly paperless system uniting all West Virginia state-owned healthcare facilities to even include outside contractors.
Join the Demonstrating Open-Source Healthcare Solutions (DOHCS) 2009 conference on February 9 to discuss and learn more about these and related issues. Now in its third year as special lead-in event for the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE), DOHCS offers those with an interest in Linux, open source, and healthcare the opportunity to share ideas and organize around achievable projects to address one of the looming concerns of the early twenty-first century. Where proprietary technology has proven itself unable to advance this crucial industry, open source promises the transparency and collaboration on which quality patient care is built.
There has been a series of complaints from the White House press pool since President Obama was sworn in last week, about the fact that he's apparently not living up to his promises of transparency -- specifically in that he hasn't been giving those mainstream press members access to certain things.
We've covered the story of the South Korean blogger who went by the name Minerva, and who was arrested for "spreading false rumors." The whole episode seemed troubling to us. It seemed as though the blogger was just posting his thoughts online, and the government didn't like what he was saying.
On February 16th 2009, the trial of The Pirate Bay will start in Sweden. Details of the case have been scarce thus far, but one of the witnesses for the prosecution will be a police officer who got a job at Warner Bros. last year. Pirate Bay’s co-founder Peter Sunde promised to bring more competent witnesses to court.
This is massively retrogressive, and takes no account of everything that has happened online for the last ten years.
Please write to your MEPs now, asking them to reject the Medina report when it comes up for a vote. I know from personal experience how effective this is.
