W.I.L. Tech-News Highlights for August 2005

Operating Systems

Wiring DRM into the OS – link.

Linux

Eben Moglen, President and Executive Director of the Software Freedom Law Center, interviewede – link.

Help for Linux newcomers

5 (bad) reasons not to use Linux – link.

10 days as a Linux user: A GNU perspective on things – link.

In Pursuit of good desktop Linux – link.

Best practices for the Linux home office: what to look for in hardware and the OS, security concerns, choosing an ISP, and protecting the data on your hard drive – part 1, part 2, part 3.

Roundup of upcoming Linux and BSD distribution releases – link.

A look at 4 live Linux CDs, Auditor, Whoppix (now WHAX), Knoppix-STD and Phlak, that can be used to assess security vulnerabilities – link. Austrumi, a 50MB Live CD distribution based on Slackware, v. 0.9.7 – review.

One-click software installation with Klik – link.

The High-Availability Linux Project (Heartbeat), aimed at the management of Linux clusters, reaches 2.0 milestone – link.

A comparison of Linux performance tuning books – link.

Linux.com’s “CLI Magic” series latest – Regular expressions and metacharacters, Typespeed the fun typing tutor, At tricks, Make time for crontab, Recycle your shell. Series index here.

LinuxWorld in pictures – link.

How Toyota and Linux keep collaboration simple – link.

Limiting Linux logins: a few different mechanisms used to keep out intruders either temporarily, or on a more permanent basis – link.

HP’s Deskjet 6840 printer on Linux reviewed – link.

What is the X Window system? – link.

Customizing FVWM, the light and fast window manager for computers running the X Window System – link.

Managing Linux daemons with init scripts – link.

LinuxWorld Conference & Expo coverage – Day 1, Day 2, Wrapup.

Is it time for Linux to lose some of its bloat? – link.

The state of Linux graphics – link. Discussion here.

Upgrading a video card on a Linux system – link.

Outlook for video production on Linux – link.

Enlightenment 17 reviewed – link.

KDE 4: understanding the buzz – link.

GNOME and the way forward – link.

BSDs, other Unixes

DesktopBSD following PC-BSD’s footsteps? – link.

Solaris 10 reviewed – link.

Sun’s Linux killer shows promise. What it needs to compete with Linux will be easier to bring about than what it already has, but will Sun see it through? – review.

Windows and DOS

A decade later, Windows 95 keeps going – link.

Microsoft advises to avoid integrated graphics cores for Windows Vista, as GUI will be a hog – link.

Windows Vista may degrade OpenGL – link.

Cygwin brings Unix to Windows – link.

Other OS’s

Thinking about Apple’s Rosetta, the translation software that Intel-based Macs will use to run legacy PPC binaries, in light of Transmeta – link.

Ars Technica reviews Zeta 1.0 in-depth – link. Discussions here, here.

Syllable 0.5.7 released – link.

MorphOS now supports 3D and more – link.

MorphOS 1.4.5 released for Classic Amiga – link.

AROS developer Adam Chodorowski is interviewed at The AROS Show – link.

ReactOS 0.2.7 released – link.

SkyOS beta 8.5 released – link.

Applications

Business Intelligence is ready for open source, but is the reverse true? – link.

JBoss is light years ahead of other open source application servers – link.

EasyPHP is an “out of the box” Apache + MySQL + PHP installation for Windows – link.

OpenWrt is an embedded Linux distribution for Linksys WRT54G and WRT54GS routers. This tiny distribution exceeds the default firmware functionality in many useful ways – link.

Partition Logic 0.57 released – link.

Generic and open source processor emulato QEMU 0.7.1 reviewed – link.

FOSS help authoring tools falter – link.

Vim’s newest features – link.

Databases

Agata Report is a tool for creating queries and reports for databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite – link.

Imendio Planner simple Linux-based project planner that still covers many of the basics – link.

Internet applications

Hacking Firefox extensions – link.

Sylpheed is a GTK+ based lightweight email client – link.

Share calendars over the Internet with iCal – link.

Office application news

Creating interactive forms with OpenOffice.org Writer – link.

Inside OpenOffice 2.0 – link.

Recovering hidden treasures in order to customize OOo 2.0 – link.

Word processors compared: OOo Writer, AbiWord, and KWord – link.

Desktop-oriented applications

29 vector drawing programs surveyed – link.

Inkscape releases update to open source SVG drawing tool – link.

Usability Eye for The GIMP Guy – link.

Macromedia launches Studio 8 – link.

Tovid is a free suite of open source tools to make that trip from the hard drive in one room to a DVD player in another completely painless – link.

Neuros MPEG-4 Recorder is a lower-priced personal video recorders, but it cannot do nearly as much as its more expensive hard drive- and DVD-based competitors, such as TiVo, ReplayTV, and UltimateTV – review.

Kino’s simplicity, ease of use, and small learning curve make it an excellent alternative for creating and editing digital media in Linux – link. Discussion here.

Which has the best built-in version of solitaire: Windows XP, GNOME, or KDE? – link.

Programming

More students prefer interdisciplinary degrees to CS – link.

An introduction to UML and classes – link.

Cairo is a vector graphics library designed to provide high-quality display and print output. Available backends include the X Window System, OpenGL, Quartz, Win32, PNG images, PostScript, and PDF files – link.

New C/C++ source code search Website – link.

Graphical user interface, Web

10 best resources for CSS – link.

Kurt Cagle’s OpenSVG keynote covers a lot of ground on XML and the next generation of GUI – link.

Migrate applications from Internet Explorer to Mozilla – link.

Scripting and high-level languages

Python 2.4.2 and 2.5 release plans – link.

CherryPy is a simple, easy to learn, application framework for Python that makes Web applications easier to write than plain CGI – link. Discussions here.

REALBasic 2005 for Linux allows one to produce GPL-licensed applications, with a free-as-in-beer, very capable, development tool – review. Discussion here.

Profiling and optimizing Ruby code – link.

Why the Rexx scripting language is faster than developing code in traditional languages like C++ and Java – link.

Security & Privacy

Infrared exploits open the door to hotel hacking – link.

Air Force database breached, military says hackers stole details on officers – link.

Modern history of cryptography techniques – link.

Massive spyware-based identity theft ring uncovered – link.

Microsoft issues anti-phishing white paper – link.

Authentication auditing in Windows 2000 – link.

Miscellaneous

Paul Graham on open source and blogging – link.

Denver International Airport automated baggage system abandoned – link.

On the defense of piracy enablers – link.

The third leg of low prices (after China and Wal-Mart): eBay – link.

Adobe gets shareholder OK for Macromedia takeover – link.

Google adds Web phone service, matching Microsoft, Yahoo, Skype – link.