Handhelds

MIZI takes on Microsoft with 3G Smartphone Linux 9

An anonymous reader writes "MIZI Research appears to be taking on the largest players in the emerging third-generation smartphone software market with an integrated solution based on its MIZI Linux 2.0 distribution. Furthermore, the Korean embedded Linux specialist is rumored to have a development deal with an unidentified major consumer electronics powerhouse that, if true, could result in 3G smartphones based on MIZI Linux 2.0 receiving aggressive worldwide development, distribution, and marketing soon."
Perl

Perl for the Disabled 55

joukev writes "Perl.com is running an article on pVoice. pVoice is an Open Source communication system for severely disabled children written in Perl. I started this for my daughter in 2001. She's still using it and hopefully the medical world will see that there are Open Source alternatives for these kinds of applications. More information on pVoice can be found on the pVoice website (general information) or on the pVoice Developers website."
Programming

Becoming a Linux Kernel Programmer? 52

Young Grasshoopa asks: "In my 6 years of IT life, I've been a sys admin, perl programmer, and a config. mgmt. engineer. I've recently learned programming in C, and somehow ended up learning a bit of Linux Kernel programming as well. I now have developed a strong motivation to become a Linux kernel developer, but given my background, I am not sure how to approach companies or Open Source Project groups. I ask all those who were in a similar situation - how do you become a full-time kernel developer?"
Programming

Reverse Engineering an MPEG Driver 275

An anonymous reader writes "Following on from the recent spate of reverse engineering articles, there is an interesting summary of the reverse engineering of a binary only Linux driver. The driver is for the integrated MPEG decoder on VIA's popular EPIA-M boards. At the moment VIA has not publicly released the source code for the MPEG chipset on these boards and will only make the code available under NDA saying that "Typically, only requests from companies developing product for sale will be approved." As a result this is holding back development of open source tools (e.g. xine, mplayer, vdr) that would be able to make use of the interesting hardware on these boards."
Programming

Programming .NET Components 327

Gianluca Insolvibile writes "I plead guilty: I have always admired Microsoft's COM architecture and the relative simplicity that allows you to reuse already installed components to create even complex programs. And I have always been fascinated by the distributed nature of DCOM, which seemed to me much more graspable than complex monsters like CORBA and J2EE. While looking for equally expressive Open Source component technologies among GNOME and KDE, I was never able to find something fitting my needs (I never got into Bonobo deeply enough, though)." Read on to see how this led Gianluca to Juval Loewy's O'Reilly-published Programming .NET Components, and what he thinks of the book.
Security

How to Develop Securely 47

An anonymous reader writes "This column explains how to write secure applications; it focuses on the Linux operating system, but many of the principles apply to any system. In today's networked world, software developers must know how to write secure programs, yet this information isn't widely known or taught. This first installment of the Secure programmer column introduces the basic ideas of how to write secure applications and discusses how to identify the security requirements for your specific application. Future installments will focus on different common vulnerabilities and how to prevent them."
GUI

Linux vs. Windows: Choice vs. Usability 1083

ThaReetLad writes "In this article at DevX, Executive Editor A. Russell Jones makes the case for a standardised GUI for Linux. He argues that the promotion of choice of GUI as a positive feature of using Linux is detrimental to its chances of attacking Microsoft's home user monopoly. From the article: '...the open source community must recognize that its primary goals: freedom of choice, freedom of source code, and freedom to alter applications, are not the goals of the average user.' In particular he argues that the choice of desktop between KDE, Gnome, IceWM etc, is not one that a former windows user, even a fairly technically competent one, is going to able to make an informed choice on, and that they should not be forced to make that choice in order to get good use out of any applications they might want to use."
KDE

KOffice To Use Open Office File Format 48

InodoroPereyra writes "This article at The Dot indicates that the KOffice developers decided to switch to the Open Office file format (OASIS) for their next major release. Excellent news both for KOffice, which will benefit from OpenOffice's excellent filters, and for the GNU/Linux Desktop users in general, who will benefit from a unified file format standard between these office suites."
Books

Teach Yourself AppleScript in 24 Hours 202

honestpuck contributes this review of Sams Publishing's Teach Yourself AppleScript in 24 Hours, writing "The market for books on AppleScript cannot be a large one, since there never seem to be many volumes in it; usually only one at a time is up to date and worth the money. Now that O'Reilly's AppleScript In A Nutshell is showing its age (and wasn't that great in the first place), and Danny Goodman's book is even older, I was pleased to hear that this volume had come along." Read on for honestpucks' mixed impressions of the book.
The Internet

SIGCOMM Networking Conference Live Over the Internet 11

Hui Zhang writes "The 2003 ACM SIGCOMM (Special Interest Group in Data Communication) conference held in Karlsruhe, Germany is being broadcast live over the Internet. There will be sessions on overlay and peer-to-peer networks, Internet routing and measurement, DoS, queue management and traffic engineering, with presentations by leading researchers from universities and research labs. The keynote speech on the first day, by David Cheriton, is entitled 'The Internet Architecture: Its Future and Why it Matters.' We will also have a re-play for each day's program in time periods that are more convenient for viewers in the U.S. Below is the broadcast schedule." The broadcast is using Quicktime, but the linked page addresses watching with Linux using CodeWeavers' CrossOver.
Programming

Teenage Girls Get Video Game Summer Camp 34

wiredbeat2000 writes "The part of my brain that led me into the Women's Studies department in college is glowing tonight, after reading about a new computer game camp set up for teenage girls. The News-Gazette Online has a story about the camps, which are called the UI Girls' Adventures in Mathematics, Engineering and Science (G.A.M.E.S.) Camp. The story comes on the heels of today's announcement by Entertainment Software Association that game demographics are skewed differently than you'd expect."
GNU is Not Unix

Guessing Linux 2.6.0 Release Date 313

thorgil writes "Guessing about the linux-2.6.0 release date is hard, but here is a new angle (pseudo-scientific): I made a graph (gif) based on errors/warnings from John Cherry's (OSDL) compile statistics for linus' linux bitkeeper tree. My guess is around 12th October, 2003. What is your guess and more important, why?"
KDE

What to Expect From Qt 4 386

An anonymous reader writes "A presentation given by Matthias Ettrich (director of Qt development, author of LyX, and founder of the KDE project), was given to the annual KDE Developer's Conference in Nove Hardy, Czech Republic. In this presentation, Matthias details what's going to be new in Qt 4.0, which will be used as a base for the next version of KDE after 3.2. Apparently, Qt 4.0 will not only include faster startup times and lighter memory usage, but will have sweeping architectural changes, including a splitting of Qt's GUI classes and non-GUI classes."
Announcements

Native Java JDK 1.3.1 Support For FreeBSD 231

ap writes "Justin T. Gibbs, of the FreeBSD Foundation, announced today the availability of a native binary release of the Java JDK 1.3.1 for FreeBSD. He also mentioned that more attention will now be focused on providing a release of the 1.4.x JDK. Such developments should allow for FreeBSD to be better suited for enterprise uses."
Software

Linux 2.4.22 Stable Kernel Released 342

An anonymous reader writes "Marcelo Tosatti has officially released another stable 2.4 Linux kernel. 2.4.22 was released early this morning and includes a lengthy list of fixes. It follows the last stable kernel in this tree, 2.4.21, by a little over two months."
Programming

JavaScript and DHTML Cookbook 153

Adios077 (Ada Shimar) writes "Ok, so I was reluctant when I first picked up and started reading O'Reilly's JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook. After all, I'm fairly proficient in JavaScript already (yes, get in line to hire me!), and if I needed some cool DHTML scripts, I could just visit a good site like Dynamic Drive. However, the book managed to both surprise and impress me, a great combination to have in a book." Find out why by reading the rest of Shimar's review, below.
Linux

LPI certification: Compiling Sources and Managing Libs 13

An anonymous reader writes "Welcome to Compiling sources and managing packages, the first of four tutorials designed to prepare you for the Linux Professional Institute's 102 (release 2) exam. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to compile programs from sources, how to manage shared libraries, and how to use the Red Hat and Debian package management systems."
Programming

OSSTMM 2.1 Released 10

Pete Herzog writes "Once again, we have officially released another OSSTMM! After over a year and a half we have improved the OSSTMM (Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual)."As we worked on packaging the 2.1 release, we all saw so much more that we wanted to put in. However we decided to put out a strong framework so following releases can come more quickly and more often and we wouldn't have to keep changing the formatting. OSSTMM 2.1 includes a lot of new stuff for those who do or require security testing. I am very happy with the updates to the manual on a whole and it's worth seeing the changes for this incremental upgrade. The following changes are included: readability, document structure, all 6 methodologies have been updated, updated law compliancies and best practices, rules of engagement structure, rules of thumb for security testers and project planning, ISECOM rules of ethics, and RAVs. You can download it directly from www.osstmm.org."
Programming

Linux Ported To Multi-Core DSP 14

prostoalex writes "UK-based Imagination Technologies announced the first port of Linux to multi-threaded DSP architecture. The port is done for Imagination's META core that it licenses out to those needing a generic DSP architecture. According to the company, 'META can run Linux on one hardware thread while running real-time DSP tasks on the other threads. META can also re-allocate MIPS on the fly so that each thread can be delivered the guaranteed share of processing resource and response time that it needs, while never clocking the processor faster than is required.'"

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