Greg-ToolsSections
|
RSS /
InformatiqueInformatique
Index (hide)
1. In english1.1 IT manager’s journalVoiceroute, a software PBX vendor, originally started as a proprietary software company but went (at least partly) open source earlier this year. In this video, CEO Ming Guang Yong says the company should have moved toward open source "a lot sooner," and explains why. He and CTO Navin Kumar also talk about some of the specific differences between their open source and proprietary versions, including how and where they draw the line between the two, and share their thoughts about dealing with open source developers and building a successful open source development community. One of the goals of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) is to become a center for education in free and open source software (FOSS) legal issues. As part of this effort, the SFLC has already published "A Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects." Its latest effort in public education, released last week, is "A Practical Guide to GPL Compliance," a 15-page guide for FOSS projects on how to avoid violations of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and Lesser General Public License (LGPL). The guide is a practical summary of its subject, but its wording is unnecessarily legalistic, and its structure and omissions sometimes fall short of the goal of being a standalone reference. Suppose someone wants to send you a large file. They could try to send it via email, but many email servers impose limits on file size. They could try sending it over during an instant messenger or Internet Relay Chat session, but that's slow, as the file actually gets transferred twice: once to the chat server, then to your machine. File transfer services like RapidShare and MegaUpload are fine, but not for confidential information. Of course, you could set up an FTP server on your box, but you don't want to leave that door open all the time. Luckily, there's now an easy solution: droopy. For enterprise system administrators looking for interoperability with Microsoft Exchange, but not the high costs associated with it, PostPath email and collaboration server could be a smart business investment. Boasting interoperability with Exchange environments for a third of the cost, thanks to its use of the Postfix mail server and many other open source components, PostPath provides drop-in capability and compatibility with Exchange environments without the need for making changes to Outlook on the client side. Being compatible with Exchange means that it can be managed using Microsoft's Active Directory infrastructure. The latest version, PostPath v3.1.2, adds support for Blackberry Enterprise Server and ActiveSync, allowing you to use mobile devices to access your email. ReadyTechs provides network support services for companies that don't want the expense of hiring and caring for their own employees. Now CEO Gerry Libertelli says the company is using Linux virtualization to open a new income stream based on cloud computing. If you follow technology trends, you have probably heard of the semantic desktop -- a data layer for annotating and sharing the information in your computer. But what you may not be aware of is that the semantic desktop is not a distant goal, but scheduled to arrive at the end of 2008. And, when it does, the idea will probably be implemented through the work done by the Nepomuk project, and, most likely, by KDE first. If you like first-person shooters, you'll love Sauerbraten. This open source game might not have the visual finesse of other FPSes, but what it lacks in the graphics department, Sauerbraten more than makes up for with its various single and multiplayer modes, including an experimental role-playing game mode, and a unique WYSIWYG in-game map editor. Sauerbraten blends the best of FPSes like Quake and Max Payne to give you a unique gaming experience. If your desktop hardware includes a graphics processing unit (GPU), you can do some cool image processing with the CVL suite of tools, which includes in image viewer, an image tone mapper, and a command-line tool for non-interactive image processing. SUSE has been around almost since the dawn of consumer-level desktop Linux, and openSUSE 11 upholds the SUSE reputation for having not just a wide range of available applications, but also excellent documentation and a fine user-to-user support community. For this video we chose the KDE 4.x desktop option. KDE 3.5x and GNOME are also available as defaults in openSUSE. Last week's 8th Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre (Free Software Regional Sessions) at the University of Belgrano in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was an opportunity for around 1,300 FOSS enthusiasts to share experiences, learn more, and have fun together. SQL injection attacks can allow hackers to execute arbitrary SQL commands on your database through your Web site. To avoid these attacks, every piece of data supplied by a user on a Web form, through HTTP Post or CGI parameters, or other means, must be validated to not contain information that is not expected. GreenSQL is a firewall for SQL -- it sits between your Web site and MySQL database and decides which SQL statements should and should not be executed. At least that's the idea -- in execution, I found some open doors. The bookmark tagging feature introduced in Firefox 3 is not particularly difficult in use: when bookmarking a Web page, enter the tags you like into the Tags field of the bookmarking dialog window and you are pretty much done. Tagging provides a more flexible way of keeping track of bookmarks than traditional folders. The folder-based system provides an "either/or"-solution to filing bookmarks. For example, you could place a bookmark for an article about installing OpenOffice.org on Puppy Linux in either a Linux or OpenOffice.org folder, but not in both. With tags, you don't have this problem: you can assign as many tags as you like, so the bookmark becomes filed under several categories at the same time. Sun Microsystems is setting out to create an open source, royalty-free video codec. Given the considerable head start of well-known, royalty-free video codecs like Dirac and Theora, you might ask why the world needs another. The answer, according to Sun, is the process the company will use to develop it -- starting with a full-on, careful examination of the patent situation. Organizations have many ways to connect, collaborate, and keep in touch with co-workers, team members, and colleagues -- which can lead to multiple logins and user accounts, services spread across the Web, or services that are simply not accessible to all team members on various types of devices. Kablink (formerly ICECore) recognizes that centralization and accessibility are major components to successful project collaboration, and its latest offering is worth a project leader's second look. Ulteo Application System is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Kubuntu and designed to work with the Ulteo Online Desktop service to provide you with an automatic offsite backup and file synchronization between live CD instances. It attempts to require as little user configuration and maintenance as possible, and provides several unique features that set it apart from being "just another distribution." Piracy notwithstanding, there are some good, valid reasons for making a backup of a DVD. K9Copy, a utility for copying DVDs, receives high marks in many forums, so I took it for a spin -- and found out its reputation is deserved. Bradley Kuhn is not a lawyer, but he works at the Software Freedom Law Center and heads the Software Freedom Conservancy. He is fun to watch and listen to because he walks the tightrope between creative, carefree developers and cautious, legally-minded lawyers. Linux.com talked with Kuhn a few months ago, but he says lots more in this 30-minute video than in that interview -- including plenty of thoughts on how businesses based on free software can (and often do) turn a profit, plus some comments on how and why open source is helping the next generation of programmers develop and improve their skills. »
[+] FOSS for studentsWhether you're a high school student or just starting out with your college coursework, the free software community has provided a wide range of solutions to make life easier. Browsing the package repository of my Linux distribution led me to applications for everything from gene sequencing to particle physics, but there are a few real gems I think any student could benefit from, including math and chemistry tools such as TiLP, wxMaxima, Kalzium, Gnome Chemistry Utils, and OpenOffice.org Math. When I first used Mono, shortly after its first appearance in 2004, one of my most important requirements was to get connected to a MySQL back end. This was quickly achieved at the time with the ByteFX data connector. Following the basic Mono tutorial quickly had me up and running, with access to MySQL databases. Last week I needed to reopen and modernize my application and found that there have been several important changes in Mono between 2004 and 2008. First, I found some "then and now" differences with the installation of the data connector. Second, I needed to make some modifications to my programming. [+ desc][+ titles]
1.2 It-Director1.3 The Register (Voir aussi cette page)BT insists orders will be deliveredOnline retailer Dabs.com has told customers to hang fire for a few days while orders due to be delivered by Amtrak are reassigned to another courier.? To Guam and beyondIt looks like Google is prepping another underwater comms cable.? Rent due again?Suing communication providers over alleged patent infringements has worked pretty well for Judah Klausner.? The semantics of force feedbackMicrosoft and the force-feedback technology firm, Immersion, appear to have come to final terms after six years of suing each other.? It's easy. Those tubes are bustedMore evidence that the intertubes are fundamentally broken has been served up by Wired.com in an article laying out a technique to surreptitiously hijack huge chunks of the internet and monitor or even modify unencrypted traffic before it reaches its intended destination.? Chinese Democracy, American ExtremismThe FBI has arrested a 27-year-old American blogger for leaking some unreleased Guns N' Roses tunes to the internet.? SQL tools plug gapsWhat was seen as a major hole in Google's MapReduce database technology has been plugged, not once but twice. In the same week.? German spies Phenom X2Quite contrary to rumors AMD scrapped its plans to bring dual-core K10 parts to the market, the chip maker may have already begun selling the line to its partners on the sly.? A road map for regulators of the futureGetting a head start on the world's antitrust regulators, an astute Finn is offering a bastardized version of Google's search engine that ignores sites served up by Google itself.? Parlez-vous GoogleTalk? Er, noAndroid developers have admitted that Google's mobile phone platform won't support GoogleTalk in its first version, and that Bluetooth support will be severely limited.? Peterborough AttacksA small British company developing a unique form of hovering aircraft says it will soon demonstrate a new and much more serious version of its technology.? More false positives ahoy?Microsoft wants to rein in more Windows XP pirates over the coming weeks, by pushing out a new version of its ?nagware? which detects when a machine is running a fake copy of the OS.? Gore-Tex killer?UK company Plasma Product Innovations (P2i) today demonstrated a chemical process it claims can render any material 100 per cent waterproof.? 130 redundancies at A Novo UKA Novo UK, which services mobile phones, monitors and set-top boxes, is laying off at least 130 staff and closing its Manchester repair centre.? Unnecessary for fraud clampdownUK election scrutineers are pushing for polling stations to require tougher proof of identity to reduce the risk of ballot-rigging, but do not want voters to be forced to bring photo ID.? Handset sales continue to soarGlobal mobile phone sales will exceed 1.2bn handsets this year, although tough economic conditions are already biting into phone sales, market watcher Gartner has warned.? But UK punters still protectedThe Mobile Marketing Association has published its guidelines for advertising pushed over Bluetooth connections, and considers anyone who hasn't opted out to be fair game for spammers.? Modest GPS-enabled mobile from NokiaReview The upgraded successor to last year?s 6110 Navigator, the 6210 is a tidy slider-design handset, bearing more than a passing resemblance in looks and specs to the recently-launched 6220 Classic.? 'Off the record' browsing is goMicrosoft has outlined the new privacy tools available in its forthcoming browser Internet Explorer 8 (IE8).? Rum, sodomy and the lashAvast there and unfurl the Twat-O-Tron ye scurvy landlubbers of Middle England, lest Portsmouth Historic Dockyard make barrel boys of ye all, damn their eyes:? Push two keys to bypass passwordiPhones protected by a password aren't actually protected at all, as just by pressing a few keys a miscreant can access all the phone's functions without needing the password at all.? Playing with the big boys nowSerco is to acquire SI International, an IT reseller specialising in the US federal market, for $423m cash - a 40 per cent premium on SI's closing price on NASDAQ yesterday. Serco is also asssuming net debt of $87.3m, so the enterprise value of the deal is $510m - a multiple of 12.3 on forecast EBITDA for 2008.? Show us the money, says NASAPresidential contender John McCain and two other bigshot Republican senators have written to George Bush urging that NASA keep the Space Shuttle fleet alive beyond 2010. The politicians are concerned about US reliance on Russia for manned space transport in the early years of the next decade.? 32GB unit offers speed boostSamsung has begun punting a compact 32GB solid-state drive card at makers of Small, Cheap Computers.? Local gov hates marketeersMost local authority electoral officers support the information commissioner's recommendation to scrap the edited electoral roll, according to a new survey.? Vostro revampedDell still hasn't formally announced its Eee PC rival but it did at least unveil some cheap Linux machines today based on Intel's Atom processor - the forecast revamp to its Vostro budget business box line-up.? Jesusphone fails ASA testThe Advertising Standards Authority has told Apple UK not to show an advert which suggested the iPhone contained "all parts of the internet" any more.? Problems solved?The iPhone Dev Team has posted PwnageTool 2.0.3.1, a revised version of the iPhone hacking utility released yesterday then quickly removed.? 'A niche market'An army of online deal seekers has called for a boycott of Boffer.co.uk, after the "daily deal" site fooled them into coveting a non-existent bovine sex device.? Have you seen my identity?The number of personal information leaks reported in the US this year have already exceeded the total amount in all of 2007, San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center said today.? Stolen keys unlock back doorAttacks in the wild are under way against Linux systems with compromised SSH keys, the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team is warning.? »
[+] Houston, we have a virusWorm infects International Space Station laptopsA computer worm that ferrets out passwords managed to stow away on laptops aboard the International Space Station, NASA has confirmed. It is not the first time a NASA computer has become infected.? Calls for death of Mac EULAPsystar, the company that sells open systems capable of running Mac OS X, plans to fight back against the copyright infringement lawsuit Apple has filed against it.? Microsoft not the only fruitEmbarcadero Technologies has updated its recently acquired CodeGear Rapid Application Development (RAD) suite and languages for Windows.? Modular Linux goodies returnHardware hackers can soon start building their own Linux gadgets with a fresh batch of Lego-like building blocks from Bug Labs.? 'You want savings? Pay us an extra hundred'US telco giant AT&T has announced two new international data plans for the Jesus Phone, saying they'll save Americans "hundreds of dollars" on journeys abroad. But we all know this is just another way for the company to hold your wallet hostage.? Entry-level replaces Fibre Channel with SAS
Music store returns - minus 'Songs for Tibet'The People's Republic has pardoned iTunes after access to the online music store was apparently blocked in reaction to selling a new Tibet-themed album during the Olympic games.? Stream ciphers easily split (maybe)Senior cryptologist Adi Shamir is developing a new attack for rooting out potential weaknesses in encryption ciphers, dubbed the Cube Attack.? A new lowWith a sick email malware campaign, pond dwelling scumbags are claiming to have kidnapped the children of would-be targets of infection.? Murders MurderdromeMurderdrome is a comic published exclusively for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which makes its removal from iTunes something of a problem for publishers Infurious and bodes badly for their comic-rendering application.? First they came for the mice; and I said nothingPentagon boffinry chiefs are on the verge of inking a deal which could see US forces equipped with "neuromorphic" imitation brain modules, each potentially as intelligent as a cat.? Bad weather, Olympics,
|
 |  |
| |
| |
| |
| |
Just 12 months after introducing the Celerra NS20, EMC has increased its capacity by 50 percent, and replaced its entry level role with a cheaper NX4 model.?
