ninejaguar asks: "Slashdot did an article on an Open Source product called Prevayler, which could theoretically resolve all the problems associated with OO's rough courtship with Relational databases. Slashdot covered Prevayler when it was still 1.x. Despite fear, doubt, and memory concerns, it has reached 2.0 alpha. Is anyone currently using this non-database solution in production? If so, has it sped development because of the lack of OO-to-RDBMS complexity? Was there a significant learning curve to speak of? The LGPL'd product could be incorporated into proprietary commercial software, and few might know about it. Is anyone considering using it in a transactional environment where speed is the paramount need? And, are there any objections to using Prevayler that haven't been answered at the Prevayler wiki? Would those who use MySQL find Prevayler to be a better solution because it's tiny (less than 100kb), 3000 times faster and is inherently ACID compliant?" Update: 09/24 19:25 GMT by C :Quite a few broken links, now fixed.

troed asks: "Anyone signing up to be the maintainer of an Open Source project and wishing to use the Perforce revision control server under their Open Source license seems to agree to being financially liable for the actions of others. The penalty is steep - a project consisting of 20 developers would mean that the person running the Perforce server might have to shell out $15000, if one of the developers release the code in an unfinished state. Read on for more details."

An anonymous reader writes "The OpenSSH team has uncovered multiple exploitable vulnerabilities in the days-old portable release of OpenSSH. That's right folks: time to patch *again*. 3.7.1p2 is now available. Instructions and mirror list here. Please note that this vulnerability only affects *portable* OpenSSH--so if you are running OpenBSD, you're safe. This vulnerability apparently has to do with PAM, so you can use the 'UsePam no' option in your config file. Info on the advisory here and here."

An anonymous reader writes "The impending release of a new stable kernel promises greater adoption for Linux, as it becomes more reliable and scalable over a larger variety of processors. This article highlights some of the changes, both big and small, with some code samples."

Jeremy Andrews writes "KernelTrap has interviewed Rusty Russell, a humorous and productive contributer to Linux Kernel development. Author of ipchains, netfilter/iptables, futexes, per-cpu counters, hot pluggable CPU support, and the new in-kernel module loading code, Rusty's efforts have had a significant impact on the upcoming 2.6 kernel. For a humorous sample of Rusty's wit, one only needs to look at his email signature which reads, 'Anyone who quotes me in their sig is an idiot. -- Rusty Russell.'" Rusty is a great guy, and this is a worthwhile read.

Mr.Oreo writes "According to Flipcode, Finnish videogame development company Cat Mother Ltd. has now closed its offices, but in their last meeting the company board decided to publish all company source code as open source. A large part of the game assets are also available. Published material includes a fully playable prototype of a 3rd person action/adventure game, and a commercial quality in-house 3D-engine (C++/DirectX9). The source code is published under the BSD license, and the content is published under the GPL license. Just downloaded the engine and snooped through it - it looks pretty complete, and definitely worth having a look at if you're a 3D code monkey."

maedls.at writes "After 6 months of development, the latest version of Knoppix 3.3 is out - Kernel 2.4.22 with HIGHMEM (4GB) support, KDE 3.1.3, XFree86 4.3, OpenOffice 1.0.3 (German and English), KOffice 1.2.1, new boot options for RAM or hard-disk preload of the CD. Possibility to create a persistent homedir with personal data and desktop settings on a memory stick or similar, optional with AES encryption." The main Knoppix site is still down in protest of European software patent legislation (click on the link inside the English paragraph to get to the meat of the site), but the excellent knoppix.net has a detailed changelog.

brentlaminack asks: "Almost a year ago Tim Bray of XML fame said 'when the huge universe of MS Office documents becomes available for processing by any programmer with a Perl script and a bit of intelligence, all sorts of wonderful new things can be invented that you and I can't imagine.' Now that MS has dropped the ball on the XML Office front, and StarOffice has fulfilled its XML promise, where are all those 'wonderful new things?' Is anybody out there writing Perl/Java/whatever programs to take advantage of StarOffice XML? Could this be an opportunity for Free/Open/Libre software to leapfrog MS Office in real productivity as XML proponents have promised all along?" What kinds of new and wonderful things can you come up with?

jellings writes "Dennis Ritchie and Kenneth Thompson will be recipients of this years' Harold Pender Award, given "to an outstanding member of the engineering profession who has achieved distinction by significant contributions to society" by the University Of Pennsylvania School of Engineering. Under the direction of Pender, ENIAC was born, and under Ritchie and Thompson, UNIX was born."

lateralus writes "In his blog, Philip Greenspun re tells of his epiphany that Java is the SUV of programming languages. An interesting point brought forth in his typical extreme style."

Dan writes "The anticipated GCC3.3.1 switch on NetBSD has happened for some of the popular platforms. NetBSD's Matthew Green announced that he has switched the alpha, i386, sparc and sparc64 ports to use GCC 3.3.1 as the default system compiler. At the same time, NetBSD's Matt Thomas announced that the arm ports(acorn26, acorn32, cats, and shark) have been switched over as well."

An anonymous reader writes "Anyone interested in squeezing maximum performance out of their GNU/Linux operating system and willing to compile a new kernel will be interested in this KernelTrap article about Andrew Morton's -mm patchset. The patchset currently offers better stability and performance than the mainline 2.6.0-test kernel, as well as containing numerous functionality enhancements. Much of the additional functionality is described, as well as providing simple step by step installation instructions. Reading this article, one can certainly understand why Linux creator Linus Torvalds has chosen Andrew to soon become the 2.6 maintainer."

Justin Elliott writes "Watch Apple Computer's own AppleScript wizard, Sal Soghoian, present 'AppleScript For System Admins' during Mac OS X Labs' September 24 webcast. Learn about essential AppleScript tools and tips under Mac OS X. Discover how AppleScript can be used for administrative tasks, and how to use AppleScript to effectively interact with the Mac OS X file system."

skookum writes "After last week's OpenSSH patch-fest, a lot of people suggested GNU lsh as a replacement. Unfortunately, it seems that the lsh team has recently discovered a heap overflow bug of their own that can lead to compromise. An exploit was posted to BugTraq two days ago. Happy patching."

irabinovitch writes "SCALE 2x is quickly approaching. It's a community-run event in Southern California put on by USC, SCLUG, and UCLA. Last year's event filled to capacity, so sign up early. Speakers will include Chris Dibona, Andrew Morton, Rob Flickenger, and other well known members of the Linux community. Talks range from uber-geek to newbie so come check us out!" The conference is set for November 22nd.

Stealthgirl writes "Check out Hidden Agenda, a game development contest with a twist. College students are challenged to build entertaining games that 'secretly' teach middle school subjects. The contest focuses on 'stealth education' in gaming, pushing students to create primarily entertaining games that also teach topics such as forces, statistics, or the solar system. Students have complete freedom in their game designs. They can work in teams of up to 8 people, build games on and for any platform, and use existing engines. Games will be judged in May, with 5 finalist teams flying to Austin to present in front of game legends such as Richard Garriott for their final shot at the $25,000 prize. While all submitted games must fulfill teaching requirements to be considered, final judging is based on 70% entertainment and 30% educational value."

acostin writes "Some open survey results were published about PHP usage in the enterprise on the InterAKT site. An alternative survey on the PHP open source mouvement can be found on Zend site. See how we've evaluated the PHP market size($$$), what people think about PHP as an alternative to Java and .NET, and what should be done in order to have your large clients adopt open source solutions."

An anonymous reader writes "According to this article at WindowsForDevices, the PCMCIA trade association rolled out version 1.0 of its next-generation standard for modular mobile and desktop computer expansion at this week's Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, CA. Dubbed "ExpressCard", the new standard is "thinner, lighter, faster" than the group's previous PC Card standards, according to PCMCIA chairman Brad Saunders. ExpressCard achieves its space reduction by replacing the legacy parallel buses of the first and second generation PCMCIA card standards with state-of-the-art, high-speed serial connections, following a trend common in current computer system design."

windowpain writes "I just discovered Joone. It's an LGPL neural net development environment for creating, training and testing neural networks. The aim is to create a powerful environment both for enthusiasts and professional users, based on the newest Java technologies. Joone is composed by a central engine that is the fulcrum of all applications that already exist or will be developed. It's available in Linux, MacOS and Windows versions."

NullProg writes "Yesterday I was diagnosed with wrist-drop, and now my right arm/hand is in traction for a spell. It may or may not be related to me sitting behind a keyboard for the last twenty years. How have other programmers dealt with the loss of a hand or even multiple fingers? I moved my mouse to the left of the keyboard and can still type faster than my wife using one hand, but upper case keys are giving me problems. Has anyone experience with the smaller keyboards from Happy Hacking? Do they help one handed people? What editors did you find the most keystroke friendly. Gvim is bearable, is there a better one I can use for single key operations? What other tips do you have for someone in my situation?"