dvlhrns - Slashdot User

Submission + - Munich's Move to Linux Exceeds Target (h-online.com)

Submitted by

jrepin

on Friday December 16, 2011 @03:28PM

jrepin writes: "In May 2003, Munich's city council resolved to migrate municipal workstations from Windows to Linux and open source. Munich's LiMux project has announced that it has exceeded its annual target for migrating the city's PCs to its LiMux client. To date in 2011, the project has migrated 9,000 systems; it had originally planned to migrate 8,500 of the 12,000-15,000 PC workstations used by city officials in Munich."

Submission + - Linus thinks virtualization is "evil" (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by

crdotson

on Friday August 19, 2011 @10:30AM

crdotson writes: "Linus said in an interview that he thinks virtualization is "evil" because he prefers to deal with the real hardware. Hardware virtualization allows for better barriers between systems by running multiple OSes on the same hardware, but OS-level virtualization allows similar barriers without a hypervisor between the kernel and the hardware. Should we expect more focus on OS-level virtualization such as Linux-VServer, OpenVZ, and LXC?"

Submission + - World of Warcraft Finally Loses Subscribers (ign.com)

Submitted by bonch on Tuesday August 16, 2011 @07:06PM

bonch writes: After seven years and a highpoint of 12 million subscribers, World of Warcraft has seen a loss of nearly one million subscribers in the last six months for the first time in its history, according to Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime during an Activision earnings call. However, the game remains the most popular MMO, and Morhaime said Blizzard plans to reverse the trend with fresh content. Some believe that the loss in subscriber interest is a sign of the game's inevitable twilight years. Blizzard also recently received the trademark Mists of Pandaria, fueling speculation for the next expansion pack.

Submission + - Linus Torvalds Ditches GNOME for Xfce (digitizor.com)

Submitted by

kai_hiwatari

on Wednesday August 03, 2011 @08:09PM

kai_hiwatari writes: "In Google+, Torvalds wrote criticized the direction that GNOME has taken with GNOME 3. He called GNOME 3 an "unholy mess" and said that the user experience in GNOME 3 is unacceptable. He said that because of GNOME 3, he has ditched GNOME for Xfce. He said that Xfce is a step down from GNOME 2 — but a huge step up from GNOME 3."

Submission + - Windows XP Market Share Finally Falls Below 50%

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01, 2011 @06:39PM

An anonymous reader writes: At the end of July 2011, Microsoft can say that Windows XP finally fell below the 50 percent mark. In other words, Redmond's decade-old operating system is now used by less than half of all Internet users.

Submission + - Software Freedom Day registration opened! (softwarefreedomday.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 23, 2011 @10:17AM

An anonymous reader writes: For those of you who think technology and more importantly software should be open and shareable, the annual celebration of Software Freedom Day has opened its registration and you have about 10 days to get a free team pack to help you with your own event organization. SFD represents about 500 teams worldwide organizing events to discuss about the importance, benefits and usage of Free and Open Source Software on the same day: September 17th this year! It's also an opportunity to preach to your local community and gives them ideas and reasons about why they should care and use FOSS. Have you considered yourself as a good advocate to convert your whole neighbourhood? Then PARTICIPATE!

Submission + - Microsoft to dump .Net for HTML5/JavaScript? (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by joelholdsworth on Monday June 13, 2011 @11:34AM

joelholdsworth writes: Microsoft seem to be set on adopting HTML5 and JavaScript as its main application development tools for Windows 8 — is this the end of .NET?" "Microsoft developers feel left in the dark and very angry at the way they are being treated. You only have to browse the Microsoft forums to discover how strong the feeling is: forum post 1, forum post 2 and an open letter.

Submission + - Silverlight Developers Rally Against Windows 8 (itnews.com.au) 1

Submitted by

aesoteric

on Wednesday June 08, 2011 @06:16PM

aesoteric writes: "A legion of Silverlight developers have threatened revolt after Microsoft made no mention of Silverlight or .Net in the vendor's brief video preview for its upcoming Windows 8 operating system. Developers expressed fears Microsoft might let their investment in skills "die on the vine" as Redmond finally embraces open standards. Microsoft, for their part, have told developers they can't say more until September."

Submission + - B&N Responds to Microsoft's Android Suit (groklaw.net)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Wednesday April 27, 2011 @06:49AM

eldavojohn writes: "You're probably familiar with Microsoft's long running assault on Android but, as noticed by Groklaw, Barnes and Noble has fired back saying, 'Microsoft has asserted patents that extend only to arbitrary, outmoded, or non-essential design features, but uses these patents to demand that every manufacturer of an Android-based mobile device take a license from Microsoft and pay exorbitant licensing fees or face protracted and expensive patent infringement litigation.' Barnes and Noble goes on to assert that Microsoft violates 'antitrust laws, threatens competition for mobile device operating systems and is further evidence of Microsoft’s efforts to dominate and control Android and other open source operating systems.' The PDF of the filing from two days ago is rife with accusations including, 'Microsoft intends to utilize its patents to control the activities of and extract fees from the designers, developers, and manufacturers of devices, including tablets, eReaders, and other mobile devices, that employ the Android Operating System.' and 'Microsoft has falsely and without justification asserted that its patents somehow provide it with the right to prohibit device manufacturers from employing new versions of the Android Operating System, or third party software.' Barnes and Noble does not mince words when explaining Microsoft's FUD campaign to both the public and developers in its attempts to suppress Android. It's good to see PJ still digging through massive court briefs to bring us the details on IP court battles."

Submission + - Linux patent protection network lures Facebook, HP (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

jbrodkin

on Wednesday April 20, 2011 @10:33AM

jbrodkin writes: "Facebook, HP, Rackspace, Juniper, Fujitsu and dozens of other organizations have joined a group building a defensive patent portfolio to protect Linux-using members from potential lawsuits. The Open Invention Network (OIN) — founded in 2005 by IBM, NEC, Novell, Phillips, Red Hat and Sony — has acquired 300 Linux-related patents and licenses to 2,000 in total in a bid to protect the Linux community from intellectual property lawsuits. The group added 74 new members this year and is giving a leadership role to Google, which is fighting lawsuits targeting Linux-based Android."

Submission + - Justices question Microsoft's vision of patent law (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Monday April 18, 2011 @06:55PM

angry tapir writes: "U.S. Supreme Court justices questioned Monday whether they should side with Microsoft and weaken the legal standard needed to invalidate a patent, with some justices suggesting there are alternatives to changing established law. The issue arose as part of the case involving Redmond and i4i."

Submission + - Open Source Programming Tools on the Rise (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Monday April 18, 2011 @10:02AM

snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner takes a look at 13 open source development projects making waves in the enterprise. From Git to Hadoop to build management tools, 'even in the deepest corners of proprietary stacks, open source tools can be found, often dominating. The reason is clear: Open source licenses are designed to allow users to revise, fix, and extend their code. The barber or cop may not be familiar enough with code to contribute, but programmers sure know how to fiddle with their tools. The result is a fertile ecology of ideas and source code, fed by the enthusiasm of application developers who know how to "scratch an itch".'"

Submission + - GIMP 2.7.2 released - another step towards 2.8 (gimpusers.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14, 2011 @08:01PM

An anonymous reader writes: The developers of GIMP have finally released a new development version on the way to GIMP 2.8. GIMP 2.7.2 includes a huge bunch of changes — but it is not intended for production use.

Journal Journal: 3 cheers for the death of the "web programmer" 2

Journal by tomhudson on Friday April 08, 2011 @10:04PM

Statistics are now proving what many of us have been saying for years - if you're a "web monkey", you're not a real programmer. Real programmers know asm, c, c++, even (yuck!) java. Adding a few scripts to a pre-made CMS simply does not make you a programmer, any more than clicking on a few icons in an IDE to "develop" software does, or changing the oil in your car makes you a mechanic.

Submission + - Ridiculous software patents: a developer's nemesis (stormdriver.com)

Submitted by

StormDriver

on Monday March 28, 2011 @09:32AM

StormDriver writes: "Have you ever thought about patenting a pop up note, an online poll, a leaderboard in an online game, or a system where you open apps by clicking icons? I have some bad news for you – it’s impossible. Not because the claim is stupid, it’s just that all of those things are already patented (take a look here, here, here, or here).

And it’s all fun and factoids, until one day you find yourself in the role of a software start-up, looking down the long black tunnel of software patenting, leading from Happy Town to Reality Check Station in Breakdown City."

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