1463439
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Superentity writes
"Computer
Business Review is reporting that an official at the European Commission has called on
Europe to take a more proactive approach to open source or risk missing out, and outlined
steps that European businesses and governments can take to help open source." From the article:
"In the US most of the large companies have clear strategies to increase open source in their product lines...In Asia and Latin America, we see that there are many national and regional projects to develop and to work on open source."
1463435
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Lisandro writes
"Nexuiz v1.0, an fast paced deathmatch FPS, has been released under the GPL. It uses a heavily modified version of the Quake 1 engine, with real time lighting/shadowing, improved particle effects and more. It looks really good and it's available for Windows and Linux, with a Mac version said to be coming soon."
1463425
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Polkan Garcia writes
"The Debian group has released an update to the 'Woody' distribution of the popular GNU/Linux OS. From the site: 'This is the sixth and final update of Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (codename 'woody') which mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections to serious problems. Those who frequently update from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update.' More good news: r6 is the final update of woody, the new stable release is coming."
1463403
story
gaijincory writes
"SCO announced it's second quarter results Wednesday. Their net loss came in at just under $2 million. Revenue was $9.2 million (down from $10.1 million in the same quarter of the prior year). The decrease in revenue was "...primarily due to continued competitive pressures on the Company's UNIX products and services.""
1463371
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B'Trey writes
"According to this story by Rob Enderle of TechNewsWorld, Linux geeks are one of the most powerful forces in the world and are set to become the next Mob. Does this mean I get to wear a cool fedora and carry my distro CDs in a violin case?"
1463325
story
An anonymous reader writes
"A top European Commission official has accused major IT players such as IBM, HP and Sun of using the open source community as mere subcontractors rather than encouraging them to develop independent commercial products. Jesús Villasante, head of software technologies at the commission, said: 'The open source community today [is a] subcontractor of American multinationals. Open source communities need to take themselves seriously and realise they have contribution to themselves and society. From the moment they realise they are part of the evolution of society and try to influence it, we will be moving in the right direction.'"
1463273
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daria42 writes
"The long awaited 3.1 release of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution - codenamed Sarge - is due out next week on the 6th of June, according to the project's release team. Around 50 release-critical bugs remain to be fixed. One more update to Debian 3.0 will also be released prior to that date. And it's about time - the last formal release was back in July 2002. Debian 3.0 will probably be supported with security patches for another 12 months."
1463249
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torrentnerd writes
"If you're on the hunt for Linux ISO Torrents you might want to check out the long list of recently released distro torrents over at LinuxISOtorrent.com. They've got frequently updated torrents from A (Arch) to Z (Zen). The site only does one thing, but does it well - helps you get the latest Linux distros downloaded via BitTorrent, quickly."
1463237
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gaijincory writes
"Greg KH, the co-maintainer of the 2.6 kernel has posted a comment on lwn.net confirming that there is indeed no such ELF vulnerability as spelled out by Paul Starzetz on isec. The bug was originally thought to be particularly nasty, allowing a malicious user to gain elevated privileges using a carefully crafted binary which would exploit the kernel's Executable and Linking Format. The bug's author confirmed that no one has been able to repro the exploit."
1463231
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philippInAfrica writes
"bridges.org just released the software comparison study that looks at free/open source software and proprietary software in community computer labs in Africa. The announcement is on bridges, or you can download the full report in PDF form. To our knowledge, this is the largest field study of its kind in developing countries - we visited 121 computer labs in Namibia, Uganda and South Africa - and we are making all data available to other researchers. Feedback from the international ./ community would be great."
1463229
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thomasvs writes
"GUADEC is now live on stream.fluendo.com. We're through for today, but talks go on monday and tuesday, starting 10:00 CEST.
If you missed out on today, you can still watch the talks from the archives."
1463241
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michaelrash writes
"I have just released a new version of fwknop that implements a single-packet authorization scheme using libpcap (similar to what Simple Nomad has proposed for the upcoming BlackHat Briefings). Fwknop has made Slashdot once before as the first tool that combines port knocking and passive OS fingerprinting. However, this new single-packet method has many advantages over port knocking, including non-replayable messages, much more data can be sent (including complete commands), an attacker cannot break sequences simply by connecting to spurious ports on the target, and more. By using Netfilter to intercept packets within the kernel, anyone scanning for a service protected by this method cannot even talk directly to the IP stack without being authorized; that makes even 0-day exploits largely toothless."
1463179
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nzkaha writes
"BBC launches new weather format using Weatherscape XT. This may be one of the higher profile deployments of Linux based systems. Weatherscape XT supplies weather graphics for all UK BBC channels plus the BBC World Service. The system relies completely on openGL graphics and there are demonstration clips of the system in use at Metra.info . Developed in NZ by MetService as a cross platform system for Linux, OS X and Windows, the BBC solution has been deployed on Linux with MySQL DB. Data is replicated to remote studios and displayed live by the Weatherscape application using Nvidia Graphics and drivers. Future deployment options will depend on customer choice and platform support."
1463167
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manugarg writes
"The Indian government is distributing free CDs of localized open sorce softwares like Firefox, OpenOffice.org etc. to encourage the use of computers across the country. ZDNet reports, 'The Indian government's decision to ship free software in this way likely will be a blow to Microsoft, which plans to release a low-cost version of Windows in India soon. Microsoft originally hoped to release its Windows XP Starter Edition--a low-cost, feature-restricted version of Windows XP--by the end of March, but it's now aiming for a June release.'"
1463143
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gaijincory writes
"Opensourceversus.com has put together a nice side-by-side comparison of Microsoft Outlook, Evolution and KDE's Kontact groupware programs. The screenshots delve in to the nitty gritty details and should help in making an informed choice, if nothing else. This is a follow up to their comparison of the Outlook Express and Thunderbird e-mail clients."
1463125
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wallykeyster writes
"NewsForge (ed: a Slashdot sister site) has an interesting review of Windows XP Home, written from the perspective of a longtime Linux user (ed: Editor roblimo). The article clearly is intended to be somewhat humorous while making a point to the 'Linux isn't ready for the desktop' crowd. The reviewer does a fair job of pointing out the strengths of Windows along with the weaknesses that would be apparent to someone trying to make the switch from Linux." From the article:
"Windows XP can't be considered consumer-ready until it has driver support for common LCD monitors during its installation and bootup procedure, especially if those monitors are easily and routinely recognized by popular Linux distributions. It's possible that the monitor manufacturers aren't willing to give Microsoft and other proprietary operating system companies the information they need to create appropriate drivers and that the manufacturers, not Microsoft, deserve the blame for this problem."
1463117
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prostoalex writes
"Earthlink and Microtel are offering cheap Xandros-based computers to anyone who's willing to sign up for Earthlink dial-up service at $22 a month. The desktops on Microtel Web site start at $70 for a basic AMD Sempron machine, Microtel laptops start at $399. ExtremeTech says there is also a SkypeOut gift certificate: 'All Xandros PCs and laptops include free Skype-to-Skype calling worldwide, plus an exclusive bonus voucher for up to 120 minutes of SkypeOut calling to any phone number in the world.'"
1463107
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Michael writes
"NewsForge (a Slashdot sister site) is carrying a 2-year OpenOffice case-study on a Detroit high school who switched from Windows NT and MS Office 97 to Linux and OpenOffice. The results? Better than expected. In 2003, the school, who saved over $100,000 in the process, converted 110 Windows NT machines to Linux with OpenOffice. After several surprising developments, including OpenOffice's ability to open old Word documents that even the new Word versions were having troubles with, the school now uses it almost exclusively, has classes on it's use, and encourages students to use it whenever possible. From the article: 'While OpenOffice.org is now used by 100% of the faculty and students in the school (though some administrative staff still uses Microsoft Office due to specific software requirements), students are not required to use OpenOffice.org when working at home. However, a presentation is given to students at the start of every school year to advise them on the use of OpenOffice.org, the availability of free copies, and potential problems of converting from Microsoft Office formats.'"
1463025
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cranos writes
"Fast on the heels of his previous article claiming the kernel is at risk of Bad Things over the BitKeeper fuss, Daniel Lyons has released a new article where Larry McVoy attacks the Open Source movement as non-innovative and dependent on the kindness of corporations. The following quote says it all: 'The open source guys can scrape together enough resources to reverse engineer stuff. That's easy. It's way cheaper to reverse engineer something than to create something new. But if the world goes to 100% open source, innovation goes to zero. The open source guys hate it when I say this, but it's true.'"
1463019
story
suezz writes
" Eweek is running a story that Redhat is releasing Netscape Directory (LDAP) under the GPL - this is huge at least from my point of view. I know of at least two huge companies that have standardized on Netscape Directory for their web applications."
