anr blogja

The Ultimate Linux Newbie Guide!

Whether you have been using a computer for years, or if you are totally new to it all, this guide can help you get to grips with all the important parts of using Linux, as opposed to Windows (or Mac OS) in order to operate your computer.

Bertrand Meyer, the creator of Eiffel the language and CTO of Eiffel Software in Santa Barbara, CA has announced in his Software Architecture course at ETH Zurich that the company's flagship product - EiffelStudio was released under the GPL today. Here is the press release: and the project's page.

Eiffel is an object oriented programming language supporting contracts. Last year the international standard (ECMA) for Eiffel was released and now the initiative to go open has been taken.
EiffelStudio Goes Open

Orange: Open Source Movie …

Orange is an animation studio set up in Amsterdam, Netherlands for the purpose of making an animated short film. Throughout their production, they are going to use and favour open source software tools such as blender all the way. They are also going to release all of their's production files, 3D models, textures, animation as Creative Commons open content on the extended edition DVD for you to inspect and use however you please.

The result of this project will be a short movie, which will be distributed under the Creative Commons license which means it will be freely available worldwide for public viewing and redistribution without royalty demands or written permission from the original copyright owners.

Wordup to such projects and the team/crew involved. I am eagerly looking forward for the release.

Linux is likely to supplant Solaris as the dominant platform for Oracle Corp's databases within the next year, according to a survey commissioned by the International Oracle Users Group (IOUG).

That would mark a major sea change for the Oracle database community, which has traditionally overwhelmingly relied on Sun.

The results were based on data provided by nearly 900 respondents, roughly 6% of the group's overall membership. They were based on answers regarding the mix of platforms that are present in each shop. Consequently, respondents could enter more than one choice.

This year, half the respondents indicate they have at least some Solaris running Oracle. Windows 2000 is the next popular platform with at least a 40% share, followed by Windows Server 2003 and Linux at 37%.

Debian GNU/Linux Referencia Kártya - A 101 legfontosabb dolog a Debian használata közben: A4 (pdf)
fordította:Tamas Fejos (tms AT inf.dunaferr.hu)
eredeti oldal: http://people.debian.org/~debacle/refcard/

A levéltárak feladata, hogy _minden_ nyilvanos papír/elektronikus/... dokumentumot megőrizzenek. Az ausztrálok az ODf-ben találták meg az ideális megoldást.

The National Archives of Australia (NAA) has announced that it will move its digital archives program to OpenOffice 2.0, an open source implementation of ODF. Unlike Massachusetts or the City of Bristol (which announced it would convert to save on total cost of ownership), the NAA will deal almost exclusively with documents created elsewhere in multiple formats. As a result, it provides a "worst possible case" for testing the practicality of using ODF in a still largely non-ODF world. If successful, the NAA example would therefore demonstrate that the use of ODF is reasonable and feasible in more normal situations, where the percentage of documentation that is created and used internally is much larger. A National Archive Moves to ODF

SANTA CRUZ, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 3, 2006--Evans Data Corp today announced that the results of its newest survey on Open Source and Linux development show a market that is deeply fragmented with no clear leader. When over 400 Open Source developers were asked to name the company that provides the best OSS offerings, Red Hat, Novell, IBM, Sun, and several others were named but no company was mentioned by more than 12% of the developers. Red Hat, mentioned by 11.7% and Novell, 10.5%, were the two most commonly named followed by IBM and Sun.

"This is the classic early growth profile for innovative new market segments," said John Andrews, President and COO of Evans Data. "While there is no distinct leader at this time, the four companies mentioned most, Red Hat, Novell, IBM, and Sun, have devoted tremendous resources to the Open Source community and are poised for huge gains in this sector."

A computer with 400 TERABYTES of Memory! (2008)

Cray Inc. is building a supercomputer that consists of 24,000 2.6 Ghz quad-core Opteron (AMD) processors. This will be the first computer ever to hit ONE PFLOP - 1 quadrillion operations/second. The human brain is capable of about 10. It will use up to 400TB of memory and 11PB of storage. The computer will require 170 MEGAWATTS of power!

tajekoztatasul: Pakson 4 db. 440 MW-os atomerumo blokk van.

[...]
Products like the Cell processor will provide the exponential processing growth needed to bring robots to a mass market, said Colin Angle, chief executive officer of iRobot. The Cell processor was developed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM, and will hit the commercial marketplace in Sony's PlayStation 3 video game console. IRobot makes products like Roomba, a robotic vacuum cleaner, and PackBot, a military robot that disables booby-traps and land mines.
[...]
Another way to spark growth in robotics design may be open-source development. IRobot shares the interface for its Roomba and PackBot robots, allowing partner companies or university researchers to modify them.

Young Programmer Takes On The Entire Telecom Industry
Mark Spencer Story

http://www.asterisk.org/

In a research park outside the low-key bustle of downtown Huntsville, Ala. Mark Spencer finishes his barbecue and resumes wreaking havoc on the multibillion-dollar phone equipment business.

Spencer is the inventor of Asterisk, a free software program that establishes phone calls over the Internet and handles voicemail, caller ID, teleconferencing and a host of novel features for the phone. With Asterisk loaded onto a computer, a decent-size company can rip out its traditional phone switch, even some of its newfangled Internet telephone gear, and say good-bye to 80% of its telecom equipment costs. Not good news for Cisco, Nortel or Avaya.

SOUTH KOREA, the world's most wired country, is rushing to turn what sounds like science fiction into everyday life. The Government, which has succeeded in getting broadband internet into 72 per cent of all households in the past five years, has marshalled an army of scientists and business leaders to make robots full members of society.

By next year, networked robots that relay messages to parents, teach children English and sing and dance for them when they get bored are scheduled to enter mass production. Outside the home they are expected to guide customers at post offices, or patrol public areas, searching for intruders and transmitting images to monitoring centres.

A review of the 10 major Linux distributions out there, giving the pros and cons of each and every one of them

Introduction

The Microsoft Windows operating system is developed and released by a single company. It comes with a minimal set of applications (a calculator, a few games, some networking tools, an Internet browser.. etc). Other software can be obtained by users from various sources and installed on the operating system.

GNU/Linux is different. A GNU/Linux operating system is made of a Linux kernel, a set of GNU tools, an installation program, a package management system and a lot of other software components. Because all these components are free to use and to distribute, anybody can assemble and configure them according to their needs and create their very own GNU/Linux operating system. Since 1993, a lot of people and companies have been distributing Linux operating systems. These distributions made it easy for people to get and to install a working GNU/Linux system on their personal computer.

Ja rossz emlekeik vannak. egy USA altal tamogatott katonai puccs soran rengeteg amerikai ceg altal szallitott zart forraskodu szamitogeprendszert "kapcsolt le" a CIA.

Venzuelan president promotes open-source software: President Hugo Chavez, long critical of big transnational companies, is promoting free open-source software as an alternative to market-dominating Microsoft Corp.

Venezuela's science and technology ministry recently held the Latin American Free Software Installation Fair, an event promoting the use of the open-source Linux operating system and other nonproprietary programs over Microsoft's Windows.

Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA) chairman Dan Glickman and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) president Cary Sherman today announced the historic merger of the two organizations. The newly-created entity is being called the Music And Film Industry Association of America, Inc.

RIAA and MPAA merge to form MAFIAA
(digg-en talaltam;)))

Image search market shares: Google - 71.9%, Yahoo! - 19.1% by ZDNet's ZDNet Research -- Among search verticals, image search enjoyed the strongest YTY growth in February 2006, increasing 91%. Google enjoyed the lion's share of image search, with 71.9%, followed by Yahoo! with 19.1% and Ask.com with 3.5%. MSN and AOL rounded out the top five image search providers.Image searches in February 2006Total Image Searches, 000189,249362,299Google Image Search76.3%71.9%Yahoo! Image [...]

Forrester Research has discovered that the top three "trustworthy" electronics manufacturers were Apple, Bose, and Dell. Microsoft scored lowest in both perceived growth and trustiness while Sony is floating somewhere in the middle.

Remember—this is not about "quality" per se, but the trust a consumer feels when purchasing a product. To see Bose hanging out way up in the corner is madness, though.

Apple, Bose, Dell tops in consumer electronics brand trust [ArsTechnica]

50 Reasons Why More People Aren't Using Your Website

1. Because they don't want to generate content, they want better life
2. Because it solves a problem they don't have
3. Because it won't help them with their problem
4. Because oprah didn't mention it
5. Because everyone they know isn't using it
6. Because it doesn't let them spy on people they care about
7. Because they just don't care about what they see
8. Because nobody at work said they should use it
9. Because it's not fun enough
10. Because it doesn't make them smile
11. Because it doesn't make or save them a ton of money
12. Because it doesn't save them a ton of time
13. Because they can't think of what they're passionate about
14. Because it doesn't save lives or save the world
15. Because it's not as exciting as vegas
16. Because it sounds like a citibank ad and they hate citibank ads
17. Because nobody's waiting in line for it
18. Because they've got jobs & kids & they're busy
19. Because they've got an appointment with american idol
20. Because they're scared of the computer
21. Because they've got enough friends
22. Because they don't write well
23. Because more people are using craigslist
24. Because you don't tell them what you want them to do
25. Because nobody will think they're a loser if they don't use it
26. Because it's a thing for weirdos or losers
27. Because it's clearly something for "computer people"
28. Because someone will steal their identity or snatch their kids
29. Because they don't understand your college words
30. Because they're better at something else that you suck at
31. Because they're not good at the computer
32. Because they were born before 1985
33. Because they're shy
34. Because it doesn't work like yahoo or amazon or ebay
35. Because it's more than 1 screen to learn, unlike google
36. Because they're depressed
37. Because they don't want to sit in front of the computer
38. Because they tried to use it, but something got messed up
39. Because they've never heard of it
40. Because there's something better to do
41. Because us-weekly is more interesting
42. Because it says "tags" or "rss" and they feel stupid
43. Because a friend or family member needs them
44. Because they don't want to look dumb
45. Because they've never heard of flickr or delicious either
46. Because there aren't enough people using it yet to make it useful
47. Because there's no nudity or celebrities
48. Because it doesn't tell them why to use it
49. Because it doesn't get them sex and/or love
50. Because they just don't want to read what you want them to read

This article is a first in series that deals with secure programming and related issues. Before we begin though, let's first define secure programming. A 'secure program' is an application that sits on a security boundary, taking input from a source that does not have the same access rights as the program. Such programs include application programs used as viewers of remote data, web applications (including CGI scripts), network servers, and setuid/setgid programs

Microsoft has lost a head-to-head competition with OpenDocument Format supporting software, with the decision of the Bristol, England City Council to convert its 5500 desktops from Office to Sun's ODF compliant StarOffice office suite. The City, after extensive study, concluded that it would save 60% of total costs of ownership over a five year period by making the switch. And, as an assist to cities, it has made the documentation of its analysis and other materials available at the Open Source Academy Website in the UK.

Red Hat's business model

GPLv3 és környékének üzleti elemzése:
Keeping Free Software Free

The decade-old email battle between IBM and Microsoft has taken a fresh twist, with IBM offering partners a cash bounty to move users off Exchange Server.

IBM is offering a limited-time deal of up to $20,000, or $20 per seat, to any of its partners who convince users to dump Microsoft's Exchange, which runs on Windows, for Linux-based versions of IBM's Notes and Domino software. The offer extends IBM's Move2Lotus campaign and builds on efforts by each company to get customers to switch platforms using code migration tools...
IBM puts cash bounty on Exchange server converts

Quake3 Distros?

This project, icculus.org/quake3 (sometimes referred to ioquake3, or
ioq3 for short) aims to build upon id Software's Quake 3 source code
release. ioquake3's goal is to create the open source Quake 3 distribution upon which people base their games and projects.

Microsoft asking EVERYONE to rewrite web pages for IE 7!!

According to information reaching eWEEK, Microsoft announced plans during a conference call on March 28 wherein Redmond officials reiterated the need for Web pages to be completely re-authored to avoid possible disruptions as a result of major changes to IE 7 as a result of a patent dispute (Eolas ~600mill$).

HP's new TestDrive program. For many small business owners this new site could allow for the benefits of testing many different platforms without having to make the investment up front. From the article: "The program, called TestDrive, is accessed online via the TestDrive Web site. It allows free-of-charge access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Novell SuSE Linux and other open source operating systems like Debian, FreeBSD and OpenVMS. After registering with the site, each user is allowed 1 GB of space in which to work and is granted access to HP hardware housed at the HP Linux Expertise Center in Marlboro, Mass. Access to the system includes the use of 64-bit processors like Integrity, Alpha, and PA-RISC; and SMP x86 and Opteron ProLiant servers."