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Databases

Drizzle's Future Moving To Rackspace? 41

abartels writes "It seems like there's been nothing but bad news and resignations coming from Oracle since it finally managed to close the deal on Sun. Finally, there's good news in that Drizzle seems to have a bright future ahead. It just isn't with Oracle, but with the Rackspace Cloud."

Comment Zenoss it is (Score 0) 342

Bias alert, I'm the Zenoss Community Manager.

Zenoss was written with the intention of making it easy to monitor and manage tens of thousands of network devices remotely. By using templates and device classes, once you have a single machine monitored the way you like, you can apply that to thousands of other devices, making individual changes as necessary. Zenoss handles network hardware, servers (Linux, Unix and Windows), databases, applications and just about anything else you need to monitor. There's a network map and a Google map mashup for mapping. No need to start from scratch, there's already an Open Source (GPLv2) Python-based solution with a large community and installers for Linux and OSX and a VMware image to get started (plus source for everything else). Lots of documentation and frequent releases, with commercial support available. If you're coming from Nagios or Cactii, you can reuse any custom plugins you've developed.

Comment There are Contributors at Every Level (Score 1) 312

I'm the Community Manager for Zenoss, an open source enterprise network monitoring application. We have thousands of installations and even more users, and we see a lot of the same participation percentages seen by Linux and Wikipedia. There's a great article call Participation Inequality, pointing out that about 90% of users are never heard from again and 10% participate in forums, mailing lists and other indirect ways. We see similar numbers ourselves, and we get really great contributions from hundreds of users from enterprise IT staffs. Extensions, patches, testing and documentation are all provided by our community, you just have to work with them to lower the barriers to entry.

Comment Re:Why any attempt to define "Fair Use" is pointle (Score 2, Insightful) 149

First, off, whether or not things are still bad, trending towards a broader definition of fair use is still good. Not only in-and-of-itself, but it provides another wedge to start undoing all the other bad stuff and overcoming the factors that lead to abuse.

Second, let's not make the mistake of focusing too much on hosting and take downs. Maybe the RIAA can still force a take down of a mashup, but if the accepted law is that my copy of the Grey Album is legit, my iPod is less likely to be seized at the border.

Education

U. of Chicago Law School Blocks Internet Access 343

Scott Jaschik writes "While some individual professors have banned laptops from classes at various colleges, the University of Chicago law school is going further, cutting off wireless and wired access in its classrooms to confront what officials see as out-of-control Web surfing. The story was first reported in the Above The Law 'legal tabloid' late last month. Students and the university's CIO question the strategy." Things will get interesting when Sprint WiMax service lights up in Chicago later this year.
Microsoft

Microsoft Should Abandon Vista? 1119

mr_mischief writes "An editorial written by Don Reisinger over at CNet's News.com takes Microsoft to task for the outright failure of Vista. He suggests that Vista may be the downfall of the company as, despite years in development, Vista was delivered to market too early. His suggestion? Support those who are running it, but otherwise ditch Vista and move on. 'Never before have I seen such an abysmal start to an operating system release. For almost a year, people have been adopting Vista and becoming incensed by how poorly it operates. Not only does it cost too much, it requires more to run than XP, there is still poor driver support ... With Mac OS X hot on its tail, Vista is simply not capable of competing at an OS level with some of the best software around. If Microsoft continues down this path, it will be Vista that will bring the software giant to its knees--not Bill Gates' departure.'"
The Courts

SCO Blames Linux For Bankruptcy Filing 321

Stony Stevenson writes "SCO Group CEO Darl McBride is now claiming that competition from Linux was behind the company's filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 'In a court filing in support of SCO's bankruptcy petition, McBride noted that SCO's sales of Unix-based products "have been declining over the past several years." The slump, McBride said, "has been primarily attributable to significant competition from alternative operating systems, including Linux." McBride listed IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems as distributors of Linux or other software that is "aggressively taking market share away from Unix.""
The Internet

Jatol.com Disappears, Stranding Customers 179

J Cardella writes "On August 31, Jatol.com — a hosting company that had operated for five years, providing excellent support and reasonable prices — disappeared, leaving hundreds, if not thousands of people without access to their Web content and email. There is speculation that Jatol may have stopped paying their host, Fastservers. The evidence is that Fastservers has been turning off the machines with Jatol's customers' content. Jatol had already collected September hosting fees from their customers (including myself). The story gets stranger. The owner of Jatol.com, Tim Tooley, has also disappeared. He was apparently very ill for some time, and speculation on the thread goes from his skipping the country to lying dead in his home. Fastservers apparently is unwilling to turn the machines back on, so people could get their content, without authorization from Tooley."
Windows

What Vista SP1 Means To You 340

An anonymous reader writes "Geek.com has an interview with Nick White, Microsoft's Vista Product Manager, covering the upcoming release of Vista SP1. The interview goes over some of the new features, how the change will affect admins, and how Microsoft decides if a change should be rolled out as an update or as part of the service pack. One of the most interesting questions asks whether people should feel that they have to wait until SP1 to upgrade to the operating system, a common practice with Windows users. White writes off this practice as no longer being necessary and notes how Windows Update has lessened the importance of the release of a service pack. Just the same, a News.com article explores the possibility that this update will finally begin driving users to Vista."
United States

U.S. Attorney General Resigns 845

willie3204 is one of many to mention that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has resigned. One of Gonzales' main opponents praised his decision stating that: "'For the previous six months, the Justice Department has been virtually nonfunctional and desperately needs new leadership,' said the Schumer statement. 'Democrats will not obstruct or impede a nominee who we are confident will put the rule of law above political considerations. We beseech the Administration to work with us to nominate someone whom Democrats can support and America can be proud of.'"
Space

Study: Martian Soil Has Signs of Life 382

geoffrobinson writes "Reuters is reporting that a scientist from Germany believes Viking probe data shows signs of life. From the article: "Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, said on Friday the spacecraft may in fact have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface. His analysis of one of the experiments carried out by the Viking spacecraft suggests that 0.1 percent of the Martian soil could be of biological origin.""

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