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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 27 declined, 15 accepted (42 total, 35.71% accepted)

Privacy

Submission + - Encrypted Google Calendar with Firefox Extensions (ibm.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "IBM's Nathan Harrington has an interesting essay on using open-source tools to ensure privacy on Google Calendar: "Today's Web applications provide many benefits for online storage, access, and collaboration. Although some applications offer encryption of user data, most do not. This article provides tools and code needed to add basic encryption support for user data in one of the most popular online calendar applications. Building on the incredible flexibility of Firefox extensions and the Gnu Privacy Guard, this article shows you how to store only encrypted event descriptions in Google's Calendar application, while displaying a plain text version to anyone with the appropriate decryption keys.""
Businesses

Submission + - Technology in 2008 (economist.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "The Economist has an article with technology predictions for 2008: " 1. Surfing will slow: The internet is not about to grind to a halt, but as more and more users clamber aboard to download music, video clips and games, ... surfing the web is going to be more like travelling the highways at holiday time. You'll get there, eventually, but the going won't be great. 2. Surfing will detach: Internet will doubtless be as popular among mobile-internet surfers as among their sedentary cousins. 3. Surfing — and everything else computer-related — will open: Rejoice: the embrace of "openness" by firms that have grown fat on closed, proprietary technology is something we'll see more of in 2008. The trend toward openness has been given added impetus by the recent collapse of the legal battles brought by SCO. The verdict removed, once and for all, the burden that had been inhibiting Linux's broader acceptance. Since the verdict against SCO, Linux has swiftly become popular in small businesses and the home, largely the doing of Ubuntu 7.10. And because it is free, Linux become the operating system of choice for low-end PCs. Neither Microsoft nor Apple can compete at the new price points being plumbed by companies looking to cut costs.""
Education

Submission + - OLPC a hit in remote Peruvian village (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "Chicago Tribune is running a story about the effects of OLPC on a remote village in Peru: "Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months ago. At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits. At night, they're dozing off in front of them — if they've managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines. Peru made the single biggest order to date — more than 272,000 machines — in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed." A detailed log has been kept and a youtube video is also available."
Linux Business

Submission + - Four months of Ubuntu on Dell (lxer.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "LXer has an interview with John Hull, a manager of the Linux Engineering team at Dell, where he reports on how the Ubuntu machines have been working out for them so far. "Embracing Ubuntu Linux on our desktops and laptops seems to have really raised Dell's visibility within the Linux community. We have been supporting, testing, developing for, and selling Linux for 8+ years here at Dell, but before the Ubuntu announcement, a lot of people didn't know that we did any of that. (...) Previous to our Ubuntu product announcement, it was much more difficult to extend this model to consumer desktop and laptop technologies. We would have a conversations with vendors about pushing Linux support for their hardware, but without a Linux product offering from Dell for that hardware, it was very difficult to convince them to release Linux drivers. That has certainly changed now that we offer Ubuntu Linux, and we are making much more progress in our vendor discussions. (...) The original sales estimates for Ubuntu computers was around 1% of the total sales, or about 20,000 systems annually. The program so far is meeting expectations. Customers are certainly showing their interest and buying systems preloaded with Ubuntu, but it certainly won't overtake Microsoft Windows anytime soon.""
Moon

Submission + - Japan Moon Probe Snaps First Photos (space.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "Space.com reports: "Almost one month after Japan's successful launch of the Kaguya lunar probe, the unmanned observatory has begun its first major activities in orbit around the moon. In addition to snapping its first lunar images, the probe jettisoned one of two 110-pound (50-kilogram) "baby" satellites that will help create a detailed gravity map of the moon." The major objectives of the "KAGUYA" mission are to obtain scientific data of the lunar origin and evolution and to develop the technology for the future lunar exploration. "KAGUYA" consists of a main orbiting satellite at about 100km altitude and two small satellites (Relay Satellite and VRAD Satellite) in polar orbit."
Linux Business

Submission + - RedHat: Customers Can Deploy Linux with Confidence (eweek.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "Eweek is reporting: "Red Hat is assuring its customers that they can continue to deploy its Linux operating system with confidence and without fear of legal retribution from Microsoft, despite the increasingly vocal threats emanating from the Redmond, Wash., company. In a scathing response to Ballmer's remarks, Red Hat's IP team said the reality is that the community development approach of free and open-source code represents a healthy development paradigm, which, when viewed from the perspective of pending lawsuits related to intellectual property, is at least as safe as proprietary software. "We are also aware of no patent lawsuit against Linux. Ever. Anywhere," the team said in a blog posting."
Privacy

Submission + - Skype-Linux reads /etc/passwd and firefox profile! (skype.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "Users of Skype for Linux have just found out that it reads the files /etc/passwd, firefox profile, plugins, addons, etc, and many other unnecessary files in /etc. This fact was originally discovered by using AppArmor, but others have confirmed this fact using strace on versions 1.4.0.94 and 1.4.0.99. What is going on? This probably shows how important it is to use AppArmor in any closed-source application in Linux to restrict any undue access to your files."
Businesses

Submission + - Open Source: Selling software that sells itself (linuxworld.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "LinuxWorld is running an insightful interview: "Open source is changing not just how companies make software, but how they sell it. Alfresco's Matt Asay explains the new sales cycle and the skills that today's software sales people need to close deals ... 'But you know what? We have worked with Microsoft on interop without doing any sort of a patent deal; as has Sugar and MySQL and Zend and these other companies. We work directly with Microsoft for a customer of ours to insure SQL Server integration with Alfresco. Didn't have to sign any patent deal with them to get that done. We both had a mutual customer. It was in our mutual interest. We both wanted to make money, therefore we did it. But the patent thing is a complete smoke and mirrors, I don't want to say trick, but it has nothing to do with interoperability. No matter how much Microsoft may repeat that, it has nothing to do with interoperability.' " Be sure also to check out their open source survey on 10000 enterprises with interesting insights and data."
Quickies

Submission + - Update on ODF vs. OOXML File Counts on the Web (geniisoft.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "In eight months since Office 2007 was released to the general public (10 months since release to enterprise customers), there are under 2000 of these office documents posted on the web. In [the last] three months, 13,400 more ODF documents have been added to the web, with only 1,329 OOXML documents added. It is hard to spin ten times as many ODF documents added as OOXML documents, especially as 451 (34%) of those new documents were added on Microsoft.com. That isn't what I would call good traction for the overwhelmingly dominant office suite [of Microsoft]."
Businesses

Submission + - Ubuntu Dell now in UK, France and Germany (direct2dell.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "Dell announced the availability of Ubuntu in Europe and future plans in China: 'I hinted at this before, but today, it's official: Dell announced that consumers in the United Kingdom, France and Germany can order an Inspiron 6400 notebook or an Inspiron 530N desktop with Ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed. In his LinuxWorld keynote, Kevin Kettler announced that Dell and Novell intend to offer SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 factory-installed on select consumer notebooks and desktops in China. This is another step in making Linux available to more customers worldwide.' :-)"
Books

Submission + - Open Library goes online with public domain books (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "A competitor to Google Book Search emerges as the Yahoo-backed Open Content Alliance launches an "open library" of its own. After several years of scanning and archiving, the Internet Archive and the Open Content Alliance this week unveiled the Open Library, their attempt at bringing public domain books to the masses. The Internet Archive has hosted texts for quite some time, but the Open Library makes fully-searchable, high-quality scans of books available, along with downloadable PDFs. It offers an experience designed to match paper: there's even a page-flipping animation as readers move forward and backward through the book. Ben Vershbow of the Institute for the Future of the Book says that when it comes to presentation, "they already have Google beat, even with recent upgrades to the [Google Book Search] system including a plain text viewing option.""
Mars

Submission + - Mars Rovers Seriously Threatened by Dust Storms (space.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "Space.com is reporting a new potentially deadly weather condition threatening the Mars rovers: 'The first and largest dusty squall has reduced direct sunlight to Mars' surface by nearly 99 percent, an unprecedented threat for the solar-powered rovers. If the storm keeps up and thickens with even more dust, officials fear the rovers' batteries may empty and silence the robotic explorers forever. "This thing has been breaking records the past few days. The sun is 100 times fainter than normal. We're hoping for a big break in the storm soon, but that's just a hope." '"
Mars

Submission + - Deep Hole Found on Mars

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "Space.com is reporting a very deep hole found on Mars: '...The geological oddity measures some 330 feet (100 meters) across and is located on an otherwise bright dusty lava plain to the northeast of Arsia Mons, one of the four giant Tharsis volcanoes on the red planet. ... The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) used its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument to draw a bead on the apparent deep hole — a feature that may cause more scientists to ponder about potential subsurface biology on Mars. Because the spot lacks a raised rim or tossed out material called ejecta, researchers have ruled out the pit being an impact crater. No walls or other details can be seen inside the hole, and so any possible walls might be perfectly vertical and extremely dark or — more likely — overhanging.' The original image and its cutout at full resolution can be found in the HiRISE site."
Windows

Submission + - After Ubuntu, Windows Looks Increasingly Bad

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "An interesting article with some advantages of using Ubuntu over Windows: After Ubuntu, Windows Looks Increasingly Bad, Increasingly Archaic, Increasingly Unfriendly. From the article: "My recent switch to a single-boot Ubuntu setup on my Thinkpad T60 simply floors me on a regular basis. Most recently it's had to do with the experience of maintaining the software. Fresh from a very long Windows 2000 experience and a four-month Windows XP experience along with a long-time Linux sys admin role puts me in a great position to assess Ubuntu. Three prior attempts over the years at using Linux as my daily desktop OS had me primed for failure. Well, Ubuntu takes Linux where I've long hoped it would go — easy to use, reliable, dependable, great applications too but more on that later. It has some elegance to it — bet you never heard that about a Linux desktop before.""
Media

Submission + - The Best VHS Capture System using Free Software?

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "I have been trying to find the best solution to transfer VHS tapes to a digital format using Free Software only. I would like to lose as little as possible in the conversion, sampling optimally, minimizing noise and being in control of every step of the process. Storage is not a problem. I'm expecting to use around 5GB+ for each hour of raw captured footage.

The software part seems promising: VLC and mencoder for conversion of raw footage, Cinelerra and many others for video editing.

However, the hardware is being tricky. Most try to bloat the device adding functions like TV/compression/edition instead of focusing on the raw A/D conversion. Chipsets are hidden, and parameters like signal-to-noise, sampling rate etc are unavailable for comparison. Information is scattered and very difficult to find.

Which chipsets/products should I look for, specially for use with Linux and BSD? Which ones allow oversampling of pixel resolution and number of frames (in order to average the values and reduce the noise)? Which setup should I use: S-Video/Composite, sampling rate/oversampling, suggestions on high-quality VHS players/heads/tape cleaning processes, etc? Has anyone tried to use scaling algorithms such as hq/scalenx to upscale video and sound resolution? Pitfalls?"

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