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Linux

Submission + - Most Android tablets fail at GPL compliance (networkworld.com)

Submitted by polar_bear`
polar_bear` writes: Red Hat's Matthew Garrett has been checking to see who's naughty and nice. Most Android tablet vendors? Naughty, naughty, naughty, when it comes to GPL compliance. The current crop of Android tablets fails miserably when it comes to GPL compliance, with most of the vendors flouting the GPL and failing to ship source.
Hardware

Submission + - Will Cheap 3D Fab Start a Innovation Renaissance? (oreilly.com)

Submitted by blackbearnh
blackbearnh writes: An article over on O'Reilly Radar makes the argument that, just as inexpensive or free software development environments has led to a cornucopia of amazing web and mobile applications, the plummeting cost of 3D fabrication equipment could usher in myriad new physical inventions. The article was prompted by a new Kickstarter project, which if funded, will attempt to produce a DIY CNC milling system for under $400. TFA: "We're already seeing the cool things that people have started doing with 3D fab at the higher-entry-level cost. Many of them are ending up on Kickstarter themselves, such as an iPhone 4 camera mount that was first prototyped using a 3D printer. Now I'm dying to see what we'll get when anyone can create the ideas stuck in their heads."
Censorship

Submission + - Beating censorship by routing around DNS (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: Last month, the US gov't shut down a number of sites it claimed were infringing copyright. They did it by ordering VeriSign to change the sites' authoritative domain name servers. This revealed that DNS is subject to government interference — and now a number of projects have emerged to bypass DNS entirely.
Linux

Submission + - Ubuntu moves away from GNOME (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's official: Ubuntu has, with its ironically named "Unity" interface, chosen to move away from GNOME for Ubuntu Natty Narwhal. At least move away from GNOME Shell. Mark Shuttleworth says that Ubuntu will still be "GNOME," even if it's not using GNOME Shell. Do you agree?
Programming

Submission + - Where are they now? Original PC Programmers

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: In 1986, Susan Lammers did a series of interviews with 19 prominent programmers in a Microsoft Press book, Programmers at Work. These interviews give a unique view into the shared perceptions of accomplished programmers... the people who invented the tools you use today. In Programmers Who Defined The Technology Industry: Where Are They Now?, Esther Schindler tracked down the fate of these prominent developers — from Robert Carr (Framework) to Dan Bricklin (VisiCalc) to Toru Iwatani (author of Pac Man, I'm glad you asked).

It isn't just a shortened resume for each of these guys, though. The article quotes the developer's 1986 views on programming, the business, and the future of computing, and in two cases (Bricklin and Jonathan Sachs (Lotus 1-2-3)) spoke with them to learn how-and-if their views changed.

One meaty example: In 1986, Bill Gates said, on Microsoft’s future: “Even though there’ll be more and more machines, our present thinking is that we won’t have to increase the size of our development groups, because we’ll simply be making programs that sell in larger quantities. We can get a very large amount of software revenue and still keep the company not dramatically larger than what we have today. That means we can know everybody and talk and share tools and maintain a high level of quality.” At the time, Microsoft had 160 programmers.
Software

Submission + - Australian Code Repository Company Buys Competitor

Submitted by Roblimo
Roblimo writes: Wow. They sent press releases out about this, and we're happy for them. But isn't Git easy to install and use — for free, even if your project is proprietary and secret, not Open Source and public? Whatever. Some people seem to feel better about proprietary software than about FOSS, so I suppose this business story is news. Sort of. At least the featured company, Atlassian, has free versions of its repository for FOSS and small-scale proprietary developers. Which is sort of nice.
Linux

Submission + - The real truth about Oracle's "new" Kernel (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday at OpenWorld Oracle announced a "new" Enterprise kernel for its so-called Unbreakable Linux. What's the real truth? The company is simply sticking a 2.6.32-based kernel on top of its re-branded Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone and trying to spin it as a new and innovative development.
Technology

Xerox PARC Celebrates 40th Anniversary 57

Posted by Soulskill from the success-that's-hard-to-copy dept.
CWmike writes "For 40 years, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center has been a place of technological creativity and bold ideas, writes Todd Weiss. The inventions it has spawned, from Ethernet networking to laser printing and the graphical user interface, have led to myriad technologies that allow us to use computers in ways that we take for granted today. When it opened on July 1, 1970, PARC was set up as a division of Xerox Corp. The idea was to invest in PARC as a springboard for developing new technologies and fresh concepts that would lead to future products. 'Conducting research at PARC four decades ago was like magic,' says Dr. Robert S. Bauer, who worked at PARC from 1970 to 2001. 'In an era of political and social upheaval, we came to work every day with a passion to free technology from the grip of the military-industrial complex and bring computation to the people.' Indeed, the company's 'technology first' culture has sometimes brought it under fire. PARC has often been criticized for its past failures to capitalize on some of its greatest inventions, allowing other companies to cash in on its ideas. (Today, PARC has a team working to protect its intellectual property.) Nevertheless, its reputation as a technology innovator is impeccable."
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Can an Open Source Map Project Make Money? (devx.com) 1

Submitted by Roblimo
Roblimo writes: Bing and Mapquest both use output from OpenStreetMap.org (OSM). Mapquest supports the project with money for equipment and access to the code they've written to integrate OSM's work with their display. Bing? They just take from the project and do nothing for it in return. This may be okay in a legal sense, but it is a seriously nekulturny way to behave. Even so, having Microsoft's Bing as a reference might help the project's founder make money. They've put a lot of work into this project, and it's doing a lot of people a lot of good, so they certainly deserve some sort of payback, either direct or indirect. They have a few ideas about how they might legitimately earn a few bucks from their project while remaining free software purists. Do you have any ideas, yourself, about how they might turn a few bucks from OSM?

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