9181014
submission
emerika writes:
The state of Texas has issued a request for offer that is embarrassing to read. On the surface, they want to invest in open source textbooks; however, the RFO is littered with statements like: "A state-developed open-source textbook is the property of the state".
Particularly annoying, and an ongoing problem, is that they have written their own definition of open source: "As defined by statute, an open-source textbook is an electronic textbook that is available for downloading from the Internet at no charge to a student and without requiring the purchase of an unlock code, membership, or other access or use charge, except for a charge to order an optional printed copy of all or part of the textbook."
Further evidence of their lack of understanding here: "The Commissioner of Education (COE) may provide a license to use a state-developed open source textbook to an entity not listed. In determining the cost of the license, the COE shall seek, to the extent feasible to recover costs of developing, revising, and distributing state-developed/state owned open-source textbooks."
Full text of the RFO can be found here: http://esbd.cpa.state.tx.us/docs/701/86724_1.pdf
8891534
submission
ruphus13 writes:
NMap has a new release out, and it is a major one. It includes a GUI front-end called Zenmap, and, according to the post, "Network admins will no doubt be excited to learn that Nmap is now ready to identify Snow Leopard systems, Android Linux smartphones, and Chumby's, among other OSes that Nmap can now identify.This release also brings an additional 31 Nmap Scripting Engine scripts, bringing the total collection up to 80 pre-written scripts for Nmap. The scripts include X11 access checks to see if X.org on a system allows remote access, a script to retrieve and print an SSL certificate, and a script designed to see whether a host is serving malware. Nmap also comes with netcat, Ndiff, and a GUI frontend for Nmap called Zenmap. Source code and binaries are available from the Nmap site, including RPMs for x86 and x86_64 systems, and binaries for Windows and Mac OS X. "
8887542
submission
ruphus13 writes:
As the pure-play Open Source companies continue to dwindle, Red Hat has thrived through the recession. Its support revenues have grown 20+%, and account for 75+% of its revenues. From the article, "Instead of the traditional strategy of selling expensive proprietary software licenses, as practiced by the Microsofts and Oracles of the world, Red Hat gets the vast majority of its revenues from selling support contracts. In the third quarter of last year, support subscriptions accounted for $164 million of its $194 million in revenue, up 21 percent year-over-year. All 25 of the company’s largest support subscribers renewed subscriptions, even despite a higher price tag."
8478840
submission
ruphus13 writes:
Monty Widenius, the main MySQL developer, fears that the argument that PostgreSQL is a FOSS alternative to MySQL and hence Oracle should be allowed to pursue MySQL is specious. He fears that Oracle, or someone else, can easily squash PostgreSQL by just 'buying out' the top 20 developers. The Postgre community has fired back, calling that claim ridiculous. According to the article, "PostgreSQL as a project is pretty healthy, and shows how vulnerable projects like MySQL are to the winds of change. PostgreSQL could die tomorrow, if a huge group of its contributors dropped out for one reason or another and the remainder of the community didn't take up the slack. But that's exceedingly unlikely. The existing model for PostgreSQL development ensures that no single entity can control it, it can't be purchased and if someone decides to fork the project, the odds are that the remaining community would be strong enough to continue without a serious glitch."
8405170
submission
ruphus13 writes:
While open source companies are aplenty, their acquisitions by proprietary source companies may be cause for concern around the viability of projects. Can a FOSS project 'survive' an acquisition? According to the article posing that question, "One has to ask, though, how healthy it is for increasingly important open-source platforms and applications to come under the wing of huge, proprietary software companies. Probably the best example to cite on that topic is the ongoing car crash that is Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems...Sun Micrososytems is one of only three big, U.S. public companies focused almost entirely on open source. If it gets swallowed up, that will leave just Red Hat and Novell. Open-source pundits are predicting that small, promising open-source players will be snapped up by bigger fish this year. And Google’s relationship to Android gets ever murkier as it sinks its commercial hooks deeper into the platform, billing its own offerings as superphones relative to other Android phones."
7913236
submission
ruphus13 writes:
Pretty much all 'touch' based interfaces have focused on interactions from 'the front'. Now we are seeing the emergence of 'back of device' interactions, thereby expanding the real-estate available for interactions. From the article, "Some of the milestones come from Patrick Baudisch, who’s spent years integrating back-of-device user interface interaction into mobile gadgets. Baudisch’s latest effort is called Nano Touch, which as you can see in the video below, allows for touch-based interface input on the rear of a small device — as opposed to on the front display. This brings two benefits: One, it expands the total amount of device real estate that the user can interact with; and two, the user’s own fingers doesn’t have to occlude the display while input is taking place."
7912444
submission
ruphus13 writes:
The Facebook guys are more than just pretty faces when it comes to squeezing out performance from the servers. In addition to working closely with AMD and Intel to squeeze out more from the chips, Facebook has built a capacity testing tool called Dyno. From the article on how Facebook benchmarks its servers, "Anecdotally, when Facebook switched from an FB-DIMM platform to the Intel San Clemente platform, utilizing DDR2 memory, we observed an unexpected increase in throughput. This performance boost initiated an investigation that found the web application to be memory- and CPU-bound. The decreased latency of the DDR2 architecture provided a significant increase in web node throughput. Baray explained that as Facebook adds more features to its service, it becomes more complex. “The web site becomes heavier, so we need to constantly adapt our capacity and figure out how we manage it smartly,” he said. In order to do that, the company needs to constantly monitor its data as effectively as possible. And that’s where Dyno comes in handy.""
7698246
submission
ruphus13 writes:
Here is some interesting 'infoporn' on where money is being made off the iphone. For example, Toshiba makes $24 off the total BOM of $178. In addition, Q3 of 2009 resulted in almost $1B in sales for iPhone parts manufacturers. AT&T is expected to earn a revenue of $2B from the data plans alone over the next 2 years.
7696522
submission
xchg writes:
Opera has announced that it's offering Opera Mobile to OEMs—the people who actually make your phones—to replace, or ship alongside, Android default browser. This is very different from Opera Mini, which has been in the Android Market for months now.
7695788
submission
hackingbear writes:
Beijing Internet users are scrabbling for downloads from BitTorrent (BT) websites following speculation that authorities will shut them down as early as this week. Internet experts told China Daily the failure might be caused by an overload of users seeking last-minute free downloads. As the largest BT download website in China with 5 million downloads each year, VeryCD has been on the verge of closure after the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) shut hundreds of similar peer-to-peer file sharing sites, including the 50 million-user BTChina, during the last 10 days in its latest attempt to fight pornography and piracy online.
7692620
submission
zednet writes:
I might stretch the nature of the word 'features' to include a few items that are less inherent in the OS and more about the community or business model ..
Marketing, Hardware support, Smart phone syncing, Enterprise presence, Workgroup setup, Touchscreen, Pre-installs, Support, Software installation, Direct X ...Link to Original Source
7380664
submission
ruphus13 writes:
The notion of dual OSes is not new. Of late, on netbooks especially, manufacturers are pushing dual Operating Systems, each serving very specific tasks. For example, for 'fast boot', Linux has become the 'OS' of choice, even on Windows netbooks. With several services moving to the cloud, is Chrome going to find its niche as being the 'Cloud OS' for devices? OSes like Jolicloud claim "people should be able to switch operating systems on their netbooks...Like the adoption of Firefox made Web 2.0 possible, enabling users to switch OS will accelerate the growth and benefits of open cloud computing.”. From the post, "Let’s assume that the Chrome OS cloud-only model does alienate users. In that case, could Google reposition Chrome OS as a secondary, instant-on operating system that might ship alongside other operating systems, or simply be downloadable to use that way? Could it be the OS that you hop into for a crash-proof, cloud-based experience, just as many people hop in and out of the Chrome browser for its stability and other reasons? As evidence of how achievable this would be, people are already easily running Chrome OS on Dell netbooks, and noticing how much faster than Windows it is at booting. People are also calling Chrome OS “lightning from a USB key” as they use it via USB alongside other operating systems without even having it locally installed."
7092016
submission
ruphus13 writes:
There was a time when Supercomputers reigned supreme in the land of CPU x-flops. Their computing dominance was unquestioned, and only the serious organization could afford them and really needed them. That, however, is rapidly changing, as supercomputers are now very similar to their 'non-super' counterparts. With the rapid increase in compute power now being made available to the enterprise datacenter, supercomputers are barely ahead of their x86, Moore's-Law fueled competitors. From the article, "Increasingly, many of the parts that make up a supercomputer — from the types of processors used to the networking cables — are the same as those used in everyday corporate computing...[The] number of different processors used to build supercomputers has been shrinking. This is partly due to Moore’s Law, which enables the x86 architecture (the same type of chips inside your computer) to make steady performance gains, but is also a function of how cheap mass-produced chips are. And because most supercomputers are built for the government, getting as many flops for the dollar is essential. Even on the networking side, Ethernet is making strides when compared to more expensive, proprietary networking technologies such as Infiniband...as supercomputers and high-performance computers use more mainstream and commodity parts, it makes it that much harder to distinguish the specialty high-performance computing vendors from those offering corporate computing products".
6750784
submission
ruphus13 writes:
eBay and the Skype founders, the legendary p2p duo, have been in intense negotiations for months, with the future of Skype hanging in the balance. The founders, whose lawsuit would force eBay to either convert Skype to SIP so it wouldn't have to use the Skype Founders' Global Index, or sell to the founders, are now rumored to be near a deal with Skype. From the scoop, "The ongoing legal scuffle between Skype, a division of eBay, and its founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, may soon see a resolution, according to someone familiar with the situation... If the founders and the company can come to an agreement, Skype will be able continue to use JoltID’s technology to power Skype and not disrupt the service that is currently used by hundreds of millions consumers...In order for Skype to exist it had two options: Do a deal with the Skype founders, or switch to SIP-based architecture. The latter may be an expensive and difficult option. Skype faces various challenges if it tries to switch to using a SIP-based architecture". It is amazing that hundreds of millions of users' convenience hangs in the balance, pivoted on proprietary code, bathed in a pissing contest...
6750600
submission
ruphus13 writes:
In a sign that ebooks are rising in popularity, a recent survey by mobile analytics company Flurry revealed that users may be using the iPhone for more 'intellectual' pursuits, and not just the visual sizzle. The 'book-related' apps on the iPhone overtook games in terms of new apps released, and one out of every five apps released were eBooks. According to the post, "Book-related apps saw an upsurge in launches in September, according to a survey conducted by Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile application analytics company. So much so, that book-related applications overtook games in the App Store as a percentage of all released apps. The trend isn’t an aberration. In October, one out of every five new applications launching on the iPhone was a book...Because from August 2008 to the same month in 2009, more apps were released in the “games” category than any other and, as a result, the iPhone (and iPod touch) became a new handheld gaming platform, one that impacted Nintendo DS. The Japanese game device maker acknowledged that the iPhone and iPod touch were among the reasons why its profits declined drastically in the most recent quarter...The sharp rise in e-book activity on the iPhone indicates that Apple is positioned to take market share from the Amazon Kindle as it did from the Nintendo DS."
