Archive for September, 2008

Drop-In Replacement For Exchange Now Open Source

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Fjan11 writes "Over 150 man-years of work were added to the Open Source community today when Zarafa decided to put their successful Exchange server replacement under GPLv3. This is not just the typical mail-server-that-works-with-Outlook, it is the whole package — including 100% MAPI, web access, tasks, iCal and Activesync. (The ...

Canonical Offers Sale of Proprietary Codecs for Ubuntu

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

ruphus13 writes "Playing DVDs on Linux that required proprietary codecs has been a source of much pain. Ubuntu (or anyone else, for that matter) is not legally allowed to redistribute these codecs. So, users were left with sub-optimal choices. Convert the multimedia to an open format, acquire new media, or ...

SGI Releases OpenGL As Free Software

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

StoneLion writes "Since its release, the OpenGL code that is responsible for 3-D acceleration on GNU/Linux has been running on licenses that were accepted by neither the Free Software Foundation (FSF) nor the Open Source Initiative. Today, however, the FSF has announced that the licenses in question have been rewritten, ...

Peru To Be First To Put Windows On OLPC Laptop

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Da Massive writes "The government of Peru will run the first ever trial of the One Laptop Per Child association's XO laptop running Windows XP. This puts the nation at the heart of a software controversy that has been raging for years between those who advocate making software and its ...

Answers from Harald Welte, "VIA’s Open Source Representative"

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Earlier this month you asked Harald about VIA's open source strategy and his work with gpl-violations.org. Here are his well-thought-out, informative answers.

Space Tourist Simonyi Prepares For Second Flight

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Toren Altair writes "Space Adventures announced today that Charles Simonyi, Ph.D., intends to train with the Soyuz TMA-14 crew in preparation for a spring mission in 2009 to the International Space Station. Simonyi flew his first space mission in 2007. He would be the first space tourist to repeat the ...

US House Limits Constituent Emails

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Plechazunga passes along this note from From The Hill: "The House is limiting e-mails from the public to prevent its websites from crashing due to the enormous amount of mail being submitted on the financial bailout bill. As a result, some constituents may get a 'try back at a later ...

"Back Door" Cheating Scandal Rocks Online Poker

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

AcidAUS sends us the story of an online poker cheating ring that netted an estimated $10M for its perpetrators over almost 4 years. The article spotlights the role of an Australian player who first performed the statistical analyses that demonstrated that cheating had to be going on. "In two separate ...

Researchers Identify Wi-Fi Dead Zones Cheaply

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

schliz writes "A new technique developed by HP Labs and Rice University could lower the cost of identifying 'dead zones' in large wireless networks. The technique '[combines] wireless signal models with publicly-available information about basic topography, street locations, and land use.' This enables Wi-Fi architects to test and refine their ...

The Facts & Fiction of Bandwidth Caps

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

wjamesau writes "What's the deal with broadband caps, like Comcast's 250GB/month data transfer limit, which goes into effect tomorrow? Om Malik at GigaOM has a whitepaper laying out the facts and fiction about Comcast's short-sightedness (which other carriers are mimicking), and how it will impact the future Internet: 'Given the ...