schestowitz - Slashdot User

Richard Stallman Says No To Mono 1008

Posted by timothy on Saturday June 27, 2009 @02:30PM from the therefore-not-a-monomaniac dept.

twitter writes "There's been a lot of fuss about mono lately. After SCO and MS suing over FAT patents, you would think avoiding anything MS would be a matter of common sense. RMS now steps into the fray to warn against a serious mistake: 'Debian's decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy which is an application written in C#, leads the community in a risky direction. It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use. .... This is not to say that implementing C# is a bad thing. ... [writing and using applications in mono] is taking a gratuitous risk.'" Update: 06/27 20:22 GMT by T : Read on below for one Mono-eschewing attempt at getting the (excellent) Tomboy's functionality, via a similar program called Gnote. Update: 06/27 21:07 GMT by T: On the other side of the coin, reader im_thatoneguy writes "Jo Shields, a Mono Developer, has published an article on 'Why Mono Doesn't Suck,' why it is not a threat to FOSS, why it is desirable to developers and why it should be included in Ubuntu by default."

Submission + - Richard Stallman says No to Mono. (fsf.org) 4

Submitted by

twitter

on Friday June 26, 2009 @11:22PM

twitter writes: "There's been a lot of fuss about mono lately. After SCO and M$ suing over FAT patents, you would think avoiding anything M$ would be a matter of common sense. RMS now steps into the fray to warn against a serious mistake.
Debian's decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy which is an application written in C#, leads the community in a risky direction. It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use. .... This is not to say that implementing C# is a bad thing. ... [writing and using applications in mono] is taking a gratuitous risk.

"

Central Anti-Virus For Small Business? 359

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday June 17, 2009 @01:52AM from the keeping-them-safe-despite-everything dept.

rduke15 writes "I'm trying to find a centrally managed anti-virus solution for a small business network, which has around 20 Windows XP machines with a Linux server. It is too big to manage each client manually. However, there is no no full-time IT person on site, and no Windows Active Directory server — just Linux with Samba. And the current solution with Symantec Endpoint Protection seems too expensive, and too complex for such a simple need. On the Linux server side, email is handled by amavisd and ClamAV. But the WinXP clients still need a real-time anti-virus for the USB disks they may bring to work, or stuff they download from their personal webmail or other sites. I'm wondering what others may be using in similar situations, and how satisfied they are with it."

A Visual Expedition Inside the Linux File Systems 85

Posted by kdawson on Monday June 15, 2009 @04:54AM from the data-porn dept.

RazvanM writes "This is an attempt to visualize the relationships among the Linux File Systems through the lens of the external symbols their kernel modules use. We took an initial look a few months back but this time the scope is much broader. This analysis was done on 1377 kernel modules from 2.6.0 to 2.6.29, but there is also a small dip into the BSD world. The most thorough analysis was done on Daniel Phillips's tree, which contains the latest two disk-based file systems for Linux: tux3 and btrfs. The main techniques used to establish relationships among file systems are hierarchical clustering and phylogenetic trees. Also presented are a set of rankings based on various properties related to the evolution of the external symbols from one release to another, and complete timelines of the kernel releases for Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. In all there are 78 figures and 10 animations."

The Anti-ODF Whisper Campaign 213

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday June 10, 2009 @11:05AM from the are-you-saying-odf-won't-make-my-docs-smell-bad dept.

eldavojohn writes "Groklaw is examining the possibility of an anti-ODF whisper campaign and the effects it has had on the ODF and OOXML Wikipedia articles. In the ODF article, Alex Brown bends the truth to make it seem like no one is supporting ODF, and that it is a flawed and incomplete standard. From the conclusion, 'So what is one to do? You obviously can't trust Wikipedia whatsoever in this area. This is unfortunate, since I am a big fan of Wikipedia. But since the day when Microsoft decided they needed to pay people to "improve" the ODF and OOXML articles, they have been a cesspool of FUD, spin and outright lies, seemingly manufactured for Microsoft's re-use in their whisper campaign. My advice would be to seek out official information on the standards, from the relevant organizations, like OASIS, the chairs of the relevant committees, etc. Ask the questions in public places and seek a public response. That is the ultimate weakness of FUD and lies. They cannot stand the light of public exposure. Sunlight is the best antiseptic.'"

Comcast Intercepts and Redirects Port 53 Traffic 527

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @02:11PM from the why-we-need-ipv6 dept.

An anonymous reader writes "An interesting (and profane) writeup of one frustrated user's discovery that Comcast is actually intercepting DNS requests bound for non-Comcast DNS servers and redirecting them to their own servers. I had obviously heard of the DNS hijacking for nonexistent domains, but I had no idea they'd actually prevent people from directly contacting their own DNS servers." If true, this is a pretty serious escalation in the Net Neutrality wars. Someone using Comcast, please replicate the simple experiment spelled out in the article and confirm or deny the truth of it. Also, it would be useful if someone using Comcast ran the ICSI Netalyzr and posted the resulting permalink in the comments.

Novell Ponders "Open-Source Apps Store" 183

Posted by timothy on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @10:00AM from the return-of-click-n-run dept.

Barence writes "Novell plans to bring the wealth of open-source software to everyday users through an 'open-source apps store.' 'I would compare what's happening on netbooks with what's happening to the smartphone,' Holger Dyroff, vice president of business development at Novell told PC Pro. 'There's a core experience, but then the ability to customise that experience. On the user end, all they'll see is an open-source applications store with one-click downloads of new software. Unlike the other stores though, they won't have to pay for any of those applications, which will be very attractive.'"

Submission + - 6LoWPAN Book Announcement (zachshelby.org)

Submitted by

Zach Shelby

on Monday June 08, 2009 @04:35AM

Zach Shelby writes: "The world's first book all about 6LoWPAN, the new IPv6 over low-power wireless standard, is currently being completed by Zach Shelby from Sensinode and Carsten Bormann, co-chair of the 6lowpan working group. Technology for embedded IP is currently extremely hot right now, with the strong support from the IP Smart Object Alliance. Recently the ZigBee Alliance announced that it is moving to integrate IP starndards in future versions of its specifications. 6LoWPAN is a standard from the IETF to allow the use of IPv6 over very low-power wireless networks, also used as the core of the recent ISA100 wireless industrial automation standard. A sneak preview of the book is available here."

Submission + - Linux market share growing, growing, growing (itwire.com) 1

Submitted by

davidmwilliams

on Monday June 01, 2009 @02:14AM

davidmwilliams writes: "Q: What is the true market share for Linux? A: Depends who you ask! You can find desktop penetration of 1%, 2% and 4% — and a server share right up to 46%!"

Submission + - Microsoft Sabotaging Firefox With Sneaky Add-Ons 4

Submitted by Slashdot on Saturday May 30, 2009 @09:09PM

Slashdot writes: The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1, unleashed in February, forces an undisclosed Firefox extension on Windows users, which not only injects a serious security vulnerability into Firefox (also present in Internet Explorer), but it disables the uninstall button, meaning the only way to get rid of it, is to edit the Windows registry.

**you may wish to remove this extension with all due haste**

http://startupearth.com/2009/05/31/microsoft-sabotaging-firefox-with-sneaky-net-updates/

Submission + - Linux Ported to Dingoo A320

Submitted by Busshy on Saturday May 30, 2009 @03:51PM

Busshy writes: Linux has arrived on the Dingoo, a console that was recently released in Asia (Bundled with emulators for 16bit consoles)and looks like the bottom half of a DS Lite and has an XMB that closely resembles those that PSP and PS3 owners are used to. Homebrew Coders have already ported ScummVM, PRBoom (Doom Engine) to Dingoo Linux.

Submission + - The elusive, royalty-free patent licence for Mono (itwire.com)

Submitted by what about on Saturday May 30, 2009 @01:37AM

what about writes: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/25215/1090/1/0/ ItWires writes: How difficult or easy is it to obtain one of the much-touted "royalty-free, reasonable and non-discriminatory" licences for Microsoft patents that are part of a technology like Mono?
Judging by the frequency with which references are made to such licences by those who back Novell vice-president Miguel de Icaza's bid to create an open source clone of Microsoft's .NET development environment, it's surprising that no-one has ever ventured to test this claim.

Submission + - Aussie prisoners escape lock-in with Ubuntu 2

Submitted by Ambush on Monday May 25, 2009 @04:00AM

Ambush writes: Shameless self-plug... A prison in Canberra Australia is deploying another 30 transparent desktops running Ubuntu Linux for use by their inmates. This will supplement stage-1 of a network comprising of Ubuntu servers and desktops which my company recently deployed. Prisoners have extremely limited access to email and web browsing, as well streaming media, educational applications, etc. More info here.

Submission + - Canonical's Ubuntu to Support Google Android? (workswithu.com)

Submitted by

Joe Panettieri

on Monday May 25, 2009 @12:38AM

Joe Panettieri writes: "During the Ubuntu Developer Summit (May 25-29, Barcelona), Canonical's Netbook team is set to show Google Android applications running on Ubuntu, according to sources that will attend the conference. Indeed, Canonical is intrigued by Google's mobile operating system. Here's why."

Submission + - West Point Maxes Security by Minning Windows.

Submitted by

twitter

on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @10:31PM

twitter writes: "Line up, maggots! Uncle Sam is going to keep you away from Windows and honor code violations.
Colonel Joe Adams from the United States Military Academy at West Point has a solution [to your security problems] ... he said recruits at the New York academy line up in the corridors outside their rooms in their barracks every Saturday morning for a notebook inspection or "IT SAMI".

The college teaches Ada ("because you can't cheat at Ada"), C++, Python and Java, he said. And it standardised on FreeBSD: "We love it, it's the key to our success". Col Adams said the college uses Windows "as little as possible".

Did I hear you say Vista?! Drop and give me 20! #@$%!"

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