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IT

What Will Happen in IT in 2007? 318

Posted by Zonk from the exciting-times dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet's Paul Murphy has set out his IT predictions for 2007. Featured among the completely predictable, OpenSolaris overtaking Linux is apparently inevitable within one year. From the article: 'By the end of the year the OpenSolaris community will be widely recognized as larger and more active than the Linux community.' Is 2007 the year of the OpenSolaris desktop? Other 'inevitables' include Microsoft's success with Vista, the continuing phase-out of Itanium, and the Cell processor powering most of the world's super-computers."
Security

Detecting Rootkits In GNU/Linux 142

Posted by kdawson from the watching-your-back dept.
An anonymous reader sends note of a blog post on rootkit detection in GNU/Linux. The article mentions only two utilities for ferreting out rootkits — the first comment to the blog post lists three additional ones — but it could be useful for those who haven't thought about the problem much. From the article: "A rootkit... is a collection of tools that a cracker installs on a victim's computer after gaining initial access. It generally consists of log cleaning scripts and trojaned replacements of core system utilities such as ps, top, ifconfig and so on."
Microsoft

Microsoft Looking to Run Windows on OLPC 392

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the one-thousand-dollar-laptop-program dept.
pete314 writes "Microsoft has been provided with a number of test models of Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop per Child computers and is trying to get Windows installed on them. The current design runs a custom version of Red Hat's Fedora Linux. Running Windows will take quite a bit of additional memory: the OLPC has 512Mb of Flash, where XP requires a minimum of 1.5Gb storage."

Mystery of Ancient Calculator Finally Cracked 241

Posted by kdawson from the Curta-had-nothing-on-the-ancients dept.
jcaruso writes, "It's been more than 100 years since the discovery of the 2,000-year-old Antikythera Mechanism, but researchers are only now figuring out how it works." From the article: "Since its discovery in 1902, the Antikythera Mechanism — with its intricate and baffling system of about 30 geared wheels — has been an enigma... During the last 50 years, researchers have identified various astronomical and calendar functions, including gears that mimic the movement of the sun and moon. But it has taken some of the most advanced technology of the 21st century to decipher during the past year the most advanced technology of the 1st century B.C."

French National Assembly Embraces Open Source 88

Posted by Zonk from the va-la-penguins dept.
eldavojohn writes "The French National Assembly is in the news as they have recently switched to Linux, OpenOffice.org & open source software at the request of several deputy members. Bernard Carayon wrote it it into the proposal entitled 'On Equal Terms' [French PDF]. From the article, 'IT staff at the National Assembly have almost six months to prepare the switch to open source.' The same document urged France to adopt ODF as a standard. Hopefully things go more smoothly for them than the Birmingham library effort."

More Voting Shenanigans in Florida 680

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the just-don't-feed-them-after-midnight dept.
stewwy writes "It looks like the the shenanigans have started already, the Register is running a story about the difficulty early voters are having with casting votes for Democrats." From the article: "The touch-screen gizmos seem strangely attracted to Republican candidates. One voter needed assistance from an election official, and even then, needed three tries to convince the machine that he wanted to vote for Democrat Jim Davis in the gubernatorial race, not his Republican opponent Charlie Crist."

Diebold Disks May Have Been For Testers 182

Posted by Zonk from the concientious-tester dept.
opencity writes "The Washington Post reports on the two Diebold source disks that were anonymously sent to a Maryland election official this past week. Further investigation has lead individuals involved to believe the disks came from a security check demanded by the Maryland legislature sometime in 2003." From the article: "Critics of electronic voting said the most recent incident in Maryland casts doubt on Lamone's claim that Maryland has the nation's most secure voting system. "There now may be numerous copies of the Diebold software floating around in unauthorized hands," said Linda Schade, co-founder of TrueVoteMD, which has pressed for a system that provides a verifiable paper record of each vote."

Bug Hunting Open-Source vs. Proprietary Software 244

Posted by Zonk from the i-am-a-big-fan-of-quality dept.
PreacherTom writes "An analysis comparing the top 50 open-source software projects to proprietary software from over 100 different companies was conducted by Coverity, working in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security and Stanford University. The study found that no open source project had fewer software defects than proprietary code. In fact, the analysis demonstrated that proprietary code is, on average, more than five times less buggy. On the other hand, the open-source software was found to be of greater average overall quality. Not surprisingly, dissenting opinions already exist, claiming Coverity's scope was inappropriate to their conclusions."

Public Betas For CrossOver Mac and Linux 183

Posted by kdawson from the new-wine-in-mac-bottles dept.
Jeremy White writes, "I am happy to announce that we have put up a new version of our public beta of CrossOver Mac as well as an equivalent public beta of CrossOver Linux. For Mac users, this release includes fixes to Internet Explorer, fixes for many cases where programs would crash when run (e.g. Microsoft Office 2000 and similar older applications), fixes for Outlook 2003, and a range of other improvements. For Linux users, the big highlights are support for World of Warcraft and many Steam based games (including Half Life 2 and Counterstrike), as well as support for Outlook 2003. Version 6 also represents a major improvement in the core of Wine since version 5 of CrossOver, so you may be pleasantly surprised as you try running unsupported applications."

Firefox To Be Renamed In Debian 625

Posted by kdawson from the browser-formerly-known-as dept.
Viraptor writes, "Debian is ready to change the name of Firefox in its distributions, beginning with Etch. They say it can be done within a week. The reasons stem from Mozilla's recent insistence on trademark fidelity and its preferences regarding Firefox patches. Debian doesn't want to accept the original trademarked fox & globe logo; they don't see it as really 'free' to use. On the other hand, Mozilla doesn't want Firefox distributed under that name if it lacks the logo. Mozilla also wants Debian patches to be submitted to them before distribution, and claims that's what others (Red Hat and Novell) are already doing. But some believe development and releases will slow down if distribution-specific patches have to be checked and accepted first. We will surely see more clashes between copyright claims and 'really free' distros such as Debian. Ubuntu is also asking similar questions." No word yet what the new name will be or what the logo will look like.

Linux Kernel Developers' Position on GPLv3 395

Posted by Zonk from the not-all-heart-shaped-penguins dept.
diegocgteleline.es writes "A group of 29 Linux kernel developers have recently come together and produced a position statement on GPLv3 (PDF, txt) explaining why, essentially, they don't like it. 'The three key objections noted in section 5 are individually and collectively sufficient reason for us to reject the current license proposal ... we foresee the release of GPLv3 portends the Balkanization of the entire Open Source Universe upon which we rely'. They've also run a GPLv3 poll."

Can Linux Pick Up Users Abandoning Win98? 491

Posted by kdawson
Mark writes, "When Microsoft announced the end of support for Windows 98 and Millennium Edition on June 30th, there was a lot of talk of these users migrating over to Linux desktops. In the weeks since this announcement, there is a very noticeable increase of activity on community boards and blogs from newbies asking questions about switching over to Linux, and how would they support their new systems." According to OneStat.com, Windows 98 and Windows ME account for about 4% of the total PCs in the world.

Apple and Windows Will Force Linux Underground 554

Posted by CmdrTaco from the still-neat-on-the-server-right dept.
eastbayted writes "Tom Yager at InfoWorld predicts: 'At the end of the decade, we'll find that Apple UNIX has overtaken commercial Linux as the second most popular general client and server computing platform behind Windows.' That's not a gloom-and-doom omen for the ever-popular Linux kernel, though, he stresses. While Apple and Microsoft will grapple for dominance of client and server spaces, Linux will be 'the de facto choice for embedded solutions.' And by 'embedded,' Yager means 'specialized.' With a push of a button and a flip of switch, he predicts, you'll be able to create a configured database and a mated J2EE server — all thanks to Linux."

Kids with Cell Phones, How Young is Too Young? 514

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the how-often-are-they-on-their-own dept.
An anonymous reader writes "CNet is reporting that the average age of a child receiving their first cell phone is continuing to drop. A report carried out last year showed that the average age of a child's first cell phone was just eight years old and is expected to drop closer to 5 years of age this year. The author raises the obligatory medical questions that have been argued about in adults for years. Just how young is too young for a cell phone?

Stallman Selling Autographs 335

Posted by CmdrTaco from the happy-hacking-should-be-trademarked dept.
UltimaGuy writes "Sports stars, musicians, and other celebrities have been charging for autographs for years, but who would have thought Richard Stallman would be doing the same? Is this just for fun, or a clever, highly effective protest? Hackers, geeks and nerds gathered together at the 7th FISL - Internacional Free Software Forum, in Porto Alegre (Brazil) last week, were astounded when they got word that Richard Stallman, the founding father of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the GPL, was charging R$ 10 (about US$ 3) for an autograph and R$ 5 (less than US$ 2) to get his picture taken by free software enthusiasts at the event floor."

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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