Free Software Linux

Datamation: “Red Hat claims that with the acquisition it can deliver a comprehensive solution integrated with the operating system, while virtualization-only vendors cannot.”

ElectronicsWeekly.com: “The promise of Linux that is robust enough to be used in telecoms networks has been a long time coming, but the fourth generation of specifications for Carrier Grade Linux is now becoming well-established.”

internetnews.com: “Transmeta, the chip maker that once challenged Intel with its low-power x86-compatible processors and once employed Linux creator Linus Torvalds for some time, has put itself up for sale.”

As November’s national election looms in the United States, voters can expect increasing coverage of the hot-button issues through the mainstream media and campaign ads. On issues important to the open source and free software communities, however, information is harder to come by. Today we take a look at what the Democratic and Republican candidates say about questions close to the FOSS voter.

Sometimes I get the feeling that I only know about 5% of what VLC can do. Everyone knows it’s a dependable, free, cross-platform media player. But read through the release notes for the latest version, 0.9.2, and you will see a dizzying array of server, network streaming, and conversion functions, most of which I have never even touched — and the new VLC exposes a lot more of that functionality.

Mail merge, the production of multiple documents that differ only in minor details, remains a difficult task in OpenOffice.org Writer. Few use the function regularly, and when they do, the mail merge wizard seems to cause as much confusion as it resolves. Writer’s original mail merge feature, retrievable from Tools -> Customize -> Add -> Documents -> Mail Merge is somewhat more straightforward, but, even with it, users are likely to confuse the original document and the information source. In comparison to those other alternatives, FastMailMerge is not only simplicity itself, but a welcome relief that easily lives up to its name.

Linux Magazine: “Behind the open source project is the British firm New Bamboo, specialists in software development based on Ruby on Rails.”

IT PRO: “Issues remain because of the reluctance of some vendors to release open source drivers or specifications.”

Network access control (NAC) aims to unify endpoint security, system authentication, and security enforcement in a more intelligent network access solution than simple firewalls. NAC ensures that every workstation accessing the network conforms to a security policy and can take remedial actions on workstations if necessary. For example, NACs can check if a workstation has antivirus software installed and, if not, NAC will limit the workstation’s access to the network. In some cases, if NAC is capable of remedial measures, it can force-install an antivirus program on the workstation so that it will conform to the security policy. Although NAC can improve the security of your environment, most commercial NACs cost several thousand dollars.

The Open Road: “The OpenRemote blog suggests that Digium remains Spencer’s primary home, but that he moonlights as the principal hardware designer for OpenRemote.”

Crunch Gear: “CG will be at the event in force with a liveblog and images but before we walk to the well of hype and drink deep and hearty droughts of orgasmic praise, let’s talk about what Android is and isn’t.”

That Grumpy BSD Guy: “Your logs contain an ever-growing mass of data on spammers. How about making an effort to make that data useful to others?”

Engadget: “While the world waits to see the first Android cellphone revealed in New York later today, others are hard at work extending the reach of the open-source OS beyond just handsets.”

Free Software Magazine: “What’s missing is a practical implementation strategy: here I present ten relatively simple changes in how you run your project, to make it more attractive to would-be contributors—especially women.”

The Linux and Unix Menagerie: “Today’s Linux/Unix bash shell script is yet another follow up to a whole cavalcade of scripts we’ve written to mine the knowledge on tap at reference.com, although this one is grabbing its material from QuotationsPage.com.”