8891534
submission
ruphus13 writes:
NMap has a new release out, and it is a major one. It includes a GUI front-end called Zenmap, and, according to the post, "Network admins will no doubt be excited to learn that Nmap is now ready to identify Snow Leopard systems, Android Linux smartphones, and Chumby's, among other OSes that Nmap can now identify.This release also brings an additional 31 Nmap Scripting Engine scripts, bringing the total collection up to 80 pre-written scripts for Nmap. The scripts include X11 access checks to see if X.org on a system allows remote access, a script to retrieve and print an SSL certificate, and a script designed to see whether a host is serving malware. Nmap also comes with netcat, Ndiff, and a GUI frontend for Nmap called Zenmap. Source code and binaries are available from the Nmap site, including RPMs for x86 and x86_64 systems, and binaries for Windows and Mac OS X. "
8887542
submission
ruphus13 writes:
As the pure-play Open Source companies continue to dwindle, Red Hat has thrived through the recession. Its support revenues have grown 20+%, and account for 75+% of its revenues. From the article, "Instead of the traditional strategy of selling expensive proprietary software licenses, as practiced by the Microsofts and Oracles of the world, Red Hat gets the vast majority of its revenues from selling support contracts. In the third quarter of last year, support subscriptions accounted for $164 million of its $194 million in revenue, up 21 percent year-over-year. All 25 of the company’s largest support subscribers renewed subscriptions, even despite a higher price tag."
8478840
submission
ruphus13 writes:
Monty Widenius, the main MySQL developer, fears that the argument that PostgreSQL is a FOSS alternative to MySQL and hence Oracle should be allowed to pursue MySQL is specious. He fears that Oracle, or someone else, can easily squash PostgreSQL by just 'buying out' the top 20 developers. The Postgre community has fired back, calling that claim ridiculous. According to the article, "PostgreSQL as a project is pretty healthy, and shows how vulnerable projects like MySQL are to the winds of change. PostgreSQL could die tomorrow, if a huge group of its contributors dropped out for one reason or another and the remainder of the community didn't take up the slack. But that's exceedingly unlikely. The existing model for PostgreSQL development ensures that no single entity can control it, it can't be purchased and if someone decides to fork the project, the odds are that the remaining community would be strong enough to continue without a serious glitch."
8405170
submission
ruphus13 writes:
While open source companies are aplenty, their acquisitions by proprietary source companies may be cause for concern around the viability of projects. Can a FOSS project 'survive' an acquisition? According to the article posing that question, "One has to ask, though, how healthy it is for increasingly important open-source platforms and applications to come under the wing of huge, proprietary software companies. Probably the best example to cite on that topic is the ongoing car crash that is Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems...Sun Micrososytems is one of only three big, U.S. public companies focused almost entirely on open source. If it gets swallowed up, that will leave just Red Hat and Novell. Open-source pundits are predicting that small, promising open-source players will be snapped up by bigger fish this year. And Google’s relationship to Android gets ever murkier as it sinks its commercial hooks deeper into the platform, billing its own offerings as superphones relative to other Android phones."
7380664
submission
ruphus13 writes:
The notion of dual OSes is not new. Of late, on netbooks especially, manufacturers are pushing dual Operating Systems, each serving very specific tasks. For example, for 'fast boot', Linux has become the 'OS' of choice, even on Windows netbooks. With several services moving to the cloud, is Chrome going to find its niche as being the 'Cloud OS' for devices? OSes like Jolicloud claim "people should be able to switch operating systems on their netbooks...Like the adoption of Firefox made Web 2.0 possible, enabling users to switch OS will accelerate the growth and benefits of open cloud computing.”. From the post, "Let’s assume that the Chrome OS cloud-only model does alienate users. In that case, could Google reposition Chrome OS as a secondary, instant-on operating system that might ship alongside other operating systems, or simply be downloadable to use that way? Could it be the OS that you hop into for a crash-proof, cloud-based experience, just as many people hop in and out of the Chrome browser for its stability and other reasons? As evidence of how achievable this would be, people are already easily running Chrome OS on Dell netbooks, and noticing how much faster than Windows it is at booting. People are also calling Chrome OS “lightning from a USB key” as they use it via USB alongside other operating systems without even having it locally installed."
6750600
submission
ruphus13 writes:
In a sign that ebooks are rising in popularity, a recent survey by mobile analytics company Flurry revealed that users may be using the iPhone for more 'intellectual' pursuits, and not just the visual sizzle. The 'book-related' apps on the iPhone overtook games in terms of new apps released, and one out of every five apps released were eBooks. According to the post, "Book-related apps saw an upsurge in launches in September, according to a survey conducted by Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile application analytics company. So much so, that book-related applications overtook games in the App Store as a percentage of all released apps. The trend isn’t an aberration. In October, one out of every five new applications launching on the iPhone was a book...Because from August 2008 to the same month in 2009, more apps were released in the “games” category than any other and, as a result, the iPhone (and iPod touch) became a new handheld gaming platform, one that impacted Nintendo DS. The Japanese game device maker acknowledged that the iPhone and iPod touch were among the reasons why its profits declined drastically in the most recent quarter...The sharp rise in e-book activity on the iPhone indicates that Apple is positioned to take market share from the Amazon Kindle as it did from the Nintendo DS."
6566463
submission
ruphus13 writes:
Privacy is becoming a scarce commodity, especially with geo-aware phones. Now, Android phone users can browse anonymously using Tor — a capability, until now, limited to the desktop. From the post, ". Thanks to a grant from the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge and the team behind The Guardian Project, now Android mobile phone owners can use Tor to browse privately on their handheld devices..."We have successfully ported the native C Tor app to Android and built an Android application bundle that installs, runs and provides the glue needed to make it useful to end users. secure, anonymous access to the web via Tor on Android is now a reality," writes Guardian Project team member Nathan Freitas. The Tor 0.2.2.6-alpha release uses toolchain wrapper scripts to run Tor without requiring root access."
6558987
submission
ruphus13 writes:
Symbian announced over a year ago that they were going to Open Source their code, and the industry has been patiently waiting for that to happen. Well, it finally has. According to news on Wednesday, "Symbian has released its platform microkernel, and software development kit (SDK), as open source under the Eclipse Public License. The Symbian Foundation claims that it is moving quickly toward an open source model, which is questionable, but the release of the EKA2 kernel is a signal that Symbian still means business about adopting an open source model. Accenture, ARM, Nokia and Texas Instruments contributed software to the microkernel, Symbian officials said. "
6420057
submission
ruphus13 writes:
In a recent talk at the Churchill Club, Michael Dell addressed several topics, including the fact that Windows 7 is poised to take advantage of the upgrade cycle. Dell has always been a strong MS OEM ally and it is now hoping to cash in again from the impending upgrades. From the post, "Dell made plain several times that he sees the installed base of technology as very old, and sees a coming “refresh cycle,” for which he has high hopes. "The latest generation of chips from Intel is strong, particularly Nehalem," he said, adding, "and Windows 7 is on its way." (The operating system arrives Oct. 22nd, although Microsoft's large-volume licensees are already getting it.) He pointed out that many business are running Windows XP, which is eight years old. "I've been using Windows 7 for a long time now," he said, "and if you get the latest processor technology and Office 2010 with it, you will love your PC again. It's a dramatic improvement""
4831383
submission
ruphus13 writes:
The race for a hyper-fuel-efficient car is on in a big way. Now, Riversimple has tried to leverage the knowledge of the masses to bring its vision to reality soon with a car that gives the equivalent of 300 miles to the gallon. From the post, "The idea to build an open source car isn't a new one, but you've got to give vehicle design company Riversimple credit for originality. The company plans to unveil its first car in London later this month, a small two-seater that weighs roughly 700 pounds. If you agree to lease one for 20 years (yes, 20), Riversimple will throw in the cost of fuel for the lifetime of the lease...The team decided to release the car's designs under an open source license in order to speed up the time it takes to develop the vehicle while also driving down the cost of its components. "
4813747
submission
ruphus13 writes:
Yahoo! has been a vociferous Apache Hadoop user and supporter for several years now, and uses it extensively within its Search technologies. Hadoop has been gaining popularity in the Cloud Computing space, with companies like the NYTimes converting 4TB and 11 million articles to PDFs in under 24 hours using Hadoop and EC2 in late 2007. Hadoop has been made available in Amazon's cloud and Yahoo has now released its own Hadoop version today. From the article, "At today's Hadoop Summit in Silicon Valley, Yahoo! announced the availability of the Yahoo! Distribution of Hadoop, a source-only version of Apache Hadoop that Yahoo! uses within its own search engine. [Hadoop] is an open source software framework that helps process very large data sets, and is widely used in large-scale data mining applications as well as in search tools at sites like Facebook and many others. For developers and users interested in Hadoop, it's worth noting that the Yahoo! Distribution of Hadoop has been widely tested and developed at Yahoo! for years now".
4811827
submission
ruphus13 writes:
Dell has been offering Linux-based machines for a while, especially its Server-class machines. Now, Dell has decided that there are several Open Source applications that ready for mainstream consumers. From the post, "While we've all been speculating about whether Dell is working on Android netbooks, the computer hardware and software vendor was busy bundling open source applications to offer to small- and medium-sized business (SMB) customers looking for low cost alternatives to commercial software. The pre-configured "SMB-in-a-box" software is only available in the U.S. for now, but Dell expects to lauch a similar offering in Asia by the end of 2009...Although no specifics have been given about which apps are inlcuded in Dell's first bundle, it is aimed at the retail sector." It is going to be interesting to see what Dell picks as the 'must-have' applications for the SMB market.
4679971
submission
ruphus13 writes:
Amazon has been one of the early movers in the cloud computing space, with its AWS offerings, including S3 and EC2. Now, there is a lot of chatter around the imminent open sourcing of all its APIs and services and the impact that will have on the other 'clouds' out there — public or private. From the article, "Amazon faces significant threats from open source cloud computing efforts if it pursues a purely proprietary path...Amazon can't ignore the cost advantages and diversity of product offerings that open source players are already offering in the cloud computing space. The company's best move is to open source its tools, which will end up diversifying them, play on a level field in terms of cost with the open source alternatives, and charge for services. Absent these moves, the company will lose potential customers to free, open source alternatives...Word is Amazon's legal team is currently 'investigating' open sourcing their various web services API's including EC2, S3, etc.", although these have not been confirmed by Amazon.
4603751
submission
ruphus13 writes:
Linux recently achieved 1% marketshare of the overall Operating System market. But, does that statistic really mean anything useful? The article thinks not. It states, "Framed in the "overall marketshare" terminology, the information (or how it was gathered and calculated) isn't necessarily questionable, it's more that it's meaningless. It's nebulous, even when one looks at several months worth of data. [How] Linux is used in various business settings answers an actual question — and the answer can be used to ask further questions, form opinions — and maybe one day even explain to some degree what 1% of the market share really means...Operating systems aren't immortal beings, and by rights, there can't be (there shouldn't be) only one...No one system can be everything to everyone, and no one system (however powerful, or stable) can do everything perfectly that just one person might require of it in the course of a day. While observing trends and measuring market share are important, the results (good or bad) shouldn't be any platform's measure of self-worth or validation. It's a data point to build on (we're weak in this area, strong in this area, our platform is being used a lot more this quarter, where did all of our uses go?) in order to improve and stay relevant."
