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Friday, March 31, 2006

Apple Market Share Declined Over 50% During Jobs' Current Reign

Apple's share of the worldwide PC market has tumbled from 4.6 percent in 1996, the year before Jobs returned, to just 2.2 percent in 2005... Gartner puts Apple's 1996 share at 4.6 percent, IDC at 5.1 percent. Market share in 2005 was 2.2 percent from Gartner and 2.3 percent from IDC... Apple's market share peaked at 15.8 percent in 1980

``It's a puzzle for sure, to the average Mac user,'' says Leander Kahney, author of the 2004 book ``The Cult of Mac'' and an editor at Wired News in San Francisco. ``They are baffled that more people don't use the Mac.''

Apple is somewhat stronger in U.S. consumer market share, with Gartner giving Apple 5.8 percent in 2005 and IDC at 2.9 percent.

It's also worth noting that Apple's worldwide market share did move up slightly last year from 1.9 percent in 2004, according to Gartner, or 2.0 percent, according to IDC.

That's because Mac sales are exceeding industry growth rates. Apple shipped 38 percent more Macs in the fiscal year ended Sept. 24, 2005, than in the prior year, and shipments were up 20 percent in the last three months of 2005.

The Mac mini, introduced last year at $499 and now starting at $599, is no doubt stoking the trend by giving newcomers an inexpensive way to join the faithful.

Sales could get another boost later this year when Apple is expected to introduce an upgrade of its aging iBook consumer notebook computer, and from Microsoft's decision last week to delay the launch of the consumer version of its new Windows Vista operating system into early 2007.

Read the whole article here

MSFT: Xbox Live Gold Free This Weekend

Microsoft will offer free access to its Xbox Live Gold service from March 31 through April 2, the company said Thursday.

The company already offers full-time free access to a lower, silver level of its live service. Users there can create player profiles, maintain lists of friends, access the Xbox Live marketplace, play multiplayer online games, and send and receive voice and text messages.

Gold-level users, who usually pay $49.99 a year, get all those features, plus enhanced gamer feedback, better friends list management, access to more sophisticated online game play and more.


Top Weekend EventsSpeaking of things you don't want to miss, here are just a few of the hot weekend events headed your way:
Beat Ubisoft: You’ve got two opportunities to take on the Ubi-dudes who brought you Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. Own them and you could win some Ubi-schwag. Get the details…

Game with Fame: The Roots. Play NBA 2K6 with Kamal from the Roots on Friday, March 31 starting at 3:00 pm Eastern/noon Pacific. Look for the gamertag: RootsGWF.

Lucky 7 Play & Win: You could win simply for playing! Play a total of at least seven hours over the weekend to be entered into a drawing for sweet Xbox Live gear. Find out more.

Frag Doll Friday: Take on Ubisoft's fierce gaming crew on Sunday, April 2, starting at 6 P.M. Eastern (3 P.M. Pacific) in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter™. Get the details.

Beat the Xbox® Team: Challenge Xbox insiders to College Hoops® 2K6, Marble Blast Ultra, and EA SPORTS™ Fight Night Round 3. Earn bragging rights and win awesome Xbox prizes!


Go to the Xbox site for more details

F-Secure Discovers Hackers Serve Rootkits With Bagle Worms

Malicious hackers have fitted rootkit features into the newest mutants of the Bagle worm, adding a stealthy new danger to an already virulent threat.

According to virus hunters at F-Secure, of Helsinki, Finland, the latest Bagle.GE variant loads a kernel-mode driver to hide the processes and registry keys of itself and other Bagle-related malware from security scanners.

The use of offensive rootkits in existing virus threats signals an aggressive push by attackers to get around existing anti-virus software and maintain a persistent and undetectable presence on infected machines.

Rootkits are typically used by attackers to open a backdoor into Windows systems, collect information on other systems on the network and mask the fact that the system is compromised.

In the case of the Bagle.GE rootkit, F-Secure researcher Jarkko Turkulainen said the rootkit successfully hides processes, files and directories, registry keys and values and contains code that will prevent certain security related processes and kernel-mode modules from running.

It also contains commands to disable security software and delete security-related files whenever they are opened.

F-Secure also found evidence of a rootkit in Gurong.A, a new worm that is based on the Mydoom code.

Both Mydoom and Bagle are considered "heavy hitters" in the world of malware research.


Read the rest here

Thursday, March 30, 2006

GOOG: Google To Buy Facebook?

Facebook, the Web site where students around the world socialize and swap information, has put itself on the block, The owners of the privately held company have turned down a $750 million offer and hope to fetch as much as $2 billion in a sale.

Google Inc. (GOOG) may periodically sell up to 5.3 million shares of stock according to a regulatory filing on Wednesday.

At its current share price of $394.98 a share, a sale of 5.3 million shares would raise nearly $2.1 billion for the Mountain View, California-based Internet powerhouse.

Now what would Google do with that 2.1 billion dollar?

GMail Chat In Opera TP2

Cybernet Technology News has posted a 5 step 'tutorial' describing how to enable Gmail in Opera 9 Preview (build 5326)

To see how this is done click on the link below

Using GMail Chat In The Latest Version Of Opera TP2

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Autism: Asperger's Syndrome Or Just A Geek?

A much higher than average percentage of computer workers are diagnosed with a mild form of autism called "Asperger's Syndrome". This test allow you to filter yourself out as just Geeky or maybe having something to actually worry about

Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at Cambridge's Autism Research Centre have created the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, or AQ, as a measure of the extent of autistic traits in adults. In the first major trial using the test, the average score in the control group was 16.4. Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher. The test is not a means for making a diagnosis, however, and many who score above 32 and even meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger's report no difficulty functioning in their everyday lives.


Take The AQ Test

JBoss Announces JBoss Messaging 1.0

JBoss is ramping up its challenge to closed-source web servers and messaging middleware with updated editions of its software for enterprise IT infrastructures.

The company today announced JBoss Messaging 1.0 - a version of JBoss MQ re-engineered to deliver a modular messaging engine capable of shipping with or without JBoss' application server and delivering a four-fold improvement in throughput.

JBoss said JBoss Messaging 1.0 represented the foundation layer for the company's planned Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) due later this year, and has been improved to support enterprise-level Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs).

JBoss Messaging 1.0 is also designed to help JBoss continue to close the gap on more mature messaging software from vendors like BEA Systems and IBM.

Last year, JBoss bought Arjuna Technologies in a move to take on BEA and IBM. Like BEA's Tuxedo and IBM's MQ, Arjuna allows reliable delivery of messages in distributed environments. JBoss has announced plans to integrate Arjuna with its own middleware and release Arjuna's technology to the open source community

JBoss Web Server 1.0 Community Release is built on Apache Tomcat, the Apache Portable Runtime and a native Tomcat layer, with the JK connector and processor hops usually used to execute in multiple tier environments removed. Fricke said JBoss wasn't "forking" the Tomcat server only "adding value" with this configuration.

Other features included support for http, https, Apache JServ Protocol, OpenSSL and in- and out- of process of CGI and PHP scripts and Microsoft's ASP.NET. Expanded support for Microsoft is apparently not a result of a technology co-operation agreement signed between Microsoft and JBoss last year

RHAT: Red Hat Beats The Street

Red Hat claimed to beat out an already healthy Linux market as it reported fourth-quarter sales figures that saw net income more than double.

The Linux distributor reported a 130 per cent increase in net income to $27.3m on revenue that grew 37 per cent to hit $78.7m during it fourth quarter. Red Hat was also happy to report earnings per diluted share up seven cents to $0.13.

Wall St analysts had forecast $78.4m revenue and EPS of $0.12.

For the company's full fiscal year 2006, Red Hat's net income grew 75.4 per cent to $79.6m on total revenue of $278.3m, an increase of 41.6 per cent over the previous year. EPS hit $0.41 compared to $0.21.

OS X Brain Avie Tevanian Quitting Apple

One of the men who helped set Apple Computer's software development efforts since 1997 is leaving the company to "take some personal time."

Chief software technology officer Avie Tevanian is quitting Apple, having acted as the prime inspiration for the highly successful OS X operating system.

A company spokesperson reportedly said Tevanian is leaving to "take some time off in the interim." It is not clear what Tevanian's next move will be. His last day with Apple will be on March 31 having joined in February 1997 as senior vice president of software engineering

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Ruby On Rails 1.1 Has Been Released

The biggest upgrade in Rails history has finally arrived. Rails 1.1 boasts more than 500 fixes, tweaks, and features from more than 100 contributors. Most of the updates just make everyday life a little smoother, a little rounder, and a little more joyful.



From the Ruby On Rails Site:


But of course we also have an impressive line of blockbuster features that will make you an even happier programmer. Especially if you’re into Ajax, web services, and strong domain models — and who isn’t these funky days?

The star of our one-one show is RJS: JavaScript written in Ruby. It’s the perfect antidote for your JavaScript blues. The way to get all Ajaxified without leaving the comfort of your beloved Ruby. It’s the brainchild of JavaScript and Ruby mastermind Sam Stephenson and an ode to the dynamic nature of Ruby.

Here goes a few sample rjs calls:

# First buy appears the cart, subsequent buys highlight it
page[:cart].visual_effect(@cart.size == 1 ? :appear : :highlight)

# Replace the cart with a refresh rendering of the cart partial
page[:cart].replace_html :partial => "cart"

# Highlight all the DOM elements of class "product"
page.select(".product").each do |element|
element.visual_effect :highlight
end

# Call the custom JavaScript class/method AddressBook.cancel()
page.address_book.cancel

# 4 seconds after rendering, set the font-style of all company
# spans inside tds to normal
page.delay(4) do
page.select("td span.company").each do |column|
column.set_style :fontStyle => "normal"
end
end
And that’s just a tiny taste of what RJS is capable of. It takes the Ajax on Rails experience far above and beyond the great support we already had. Bringing us even closer to the goal of “as easy as not to”. Read more about RJS in the docs or in Cody Fauser’s tutorial about element and collection proxies and his introduction to RJS (it shouldn’t surprise you that Cody is writing about book about RJS for O’Reilly).


Upgrading from 1.0

So with such a massive update, upgrading is going to be hell, right? Wrong! We’ve gone to painstaking lengths to ensure that upgrading from 1.0 will be as easy as pie. Here goes the steps:

Update to Rails 1.1:
gem install rails --include-dependencies
Update JavaScripts for RJS:
rake rails:update
That’s pretty much it! If you’re seeing any nastiness after upgrading, it’s most likely due to a plugin that’s incompatible with 1.1. See if the author hasn’t updated it and otherwise force him to do so.

If you’re on Ruby 1.8.2 with Windows, though, you’ll want to upgrade to the 1.8.4 (or the script/console will fail). And even if you’re on another platform, it’s a good idea to upgrade to Ruby 1.8.4. We still support 1.8.2, but might not in the next major release. So may as well get the upgrading with over with now.


Some Ruby On Rails books:
Agile Web Development with Rails
Ruby On Rails
Ruby For Rails
Beginning Ruby On Rails
Ruby In A Nutshell

Go to the the Ruby On Rails site

Solaris Author Stanislaw Lem Dies In Krakow Poland

Stanislaw Lem (September 12, 1921 – March 27, 2006) was a Polish science fiction, philosophical, and satirical writer. His books have been translated into 41 languages and sold over 27 million copies. At one point he was the most widely read non-English language science fiction author in the world

Stanislaw Lem was born in 1921 in Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), the son of a physician. Although Lem was ethnically Jewish, he was raised a Catholic and later became an atheist "for moral reasons". He studied medicine at Lwów University, but World War II interrupted his studies. During the war and Nazi occupation Lem was able to survive with false papers working as a car mechanic and welder, and was a member of the resistance fighting against the Germans. In 1946 Lem "repatriated" from the territory annexed by the Soviet Union to Kraków and started medical studies at the Jagiellonian University. After finishing his studies Stanislaw Lem opted not to take final exams to avoid a career as a military doctor, and received only a certificate of completion of studies. He worked as a research assistant in a scientific institution and started to write stories in his spare time. In 1981 he received an honorary degree from the Wrocław Polytechnic, later from Opole University, University of Lwów, and finally from the Jagiellonian University. Lem died in Kraków on March 27, 2006 at the age of 84 after a long illness.
He gained international fame for The Cyberiad, a series of short stories from a mechanical world ruled by robots, first published in English in 1974. Perhaps his most famous novel is Solaris, published in 1961 and set on an isolated space station. This book was made into a film in 1972 by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and into a 2002 Hollywood remake shot by Steven Soderbergh and starring George Clooney.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Python: wxPython in Action

If you add the powerful wxWidgets toolkit to Python, you get wxPython: an open source GUI framework with a well-deserved reputation for simplicity and ease of use. wxPython lets you build cross-platform applications that have robust, highly functional graphical user interfaces.

The first book on the subject, wxPython in Action offers a friendly tutorial to get you started, a detailed guide to best practices, and an extensive reference for wxPython’s large widget library. It covers an impressive amount of information delivered at a measured pace, encouraging experimentation and learning by doing.

The book’s direct, no-nonsense style makes for an easy introduction to the concepts. It offers a complete discussion of when, why, and how to use the many widgets in the toolkit. And it includes dozens of handy reference tables so you can easily look up object properties, methods, and events. Co-authored by wxPython creator Robin Dunn, wxPython in Action is the authoritative book on the subject

What's inside?
Create professional GUIs with wxPython
Program in an event-oriented framework
Use wxPython sizers for your layout
Refactor and unit test to improve your programs
A reference to wxPython’s powerful widget set

Chapters
Chapter 1 Welcome to wxPython
Chapter 2 Giving your wxPython program a solid foundation
Chapter 3 Working in an event-driven environment
Chapter 4 Making wxPython easier to handle with PyCrust
Chapter 5 Creating your blueprint
Chapter 6 Working with the basic building blocks
Chapter 7 Working with the basic controls
Chapter 8 Putting widgets in frames
Chapter 9 Giving users choices with dialogs
Chapter 10 Creating and using wxPython menus
Chapter 11 Placing widgets with sizers
Chapter 12 Manipulating basic graphical images
Chapter 13 Building list controls and managing items
Chapter 14 Coordinating the grid control
Chapter 15 Climbing the tree control
Chapter 16 Incorporating HTML into your application
Chapter 17 The wxPython printing framework
Chapter 18 Using other wxPython functionality


The Amazon link is here

Altiris Releases Altiris Software Virtualization Solution

Altiris has managed to garner huge recognition over the course of the last few years as a supplier of the management tools that today are essential to administer much of the distributed IT infrastructure.

Perhaps best known for its Asset, Change Management and Software Deployment solutions the company has become a key player in the IT areas where the importance of automation, knowledge and control capabilities cannot be underestimated. Now the company has increased its portfolio of offerings with the release of the Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS).

SVS has been designed to address the problems associated with the deployment of application software to desktop devices. The use of 'virtualisation' capabilities in the new Altiris solution can help organisations alleviate many of problems associated with software conflicts that are commonly encountered. In addition, the use of SVS could speed application deployment making it simpler for IT to help align IT usage with rapidly fluctuating alterations to business requirements.

Read the rest here

Open Source Backup Tool Amanda 2.5 Released By Zmanda

Amanda is the most popular Open Source Backup and Archiving software that protects thousands of production servers running various versions of Linux, UNIX, Mac OS-X and Microsoft Windows operating systems worldwide.

The key reasons for wide adoption of Amanda are:
Amanda simplifies the life of a System Administrator who can easily set up a single server to back up multiple networked clients to a tape- or disk-based storage system.
Amanda provides the unique capability of writing backups to tape and disk simultaneously. The very same data could be available on-line for quick restores from disk and off-site for disaster recovery and long term retention.

Since Amanda does not use proprietary device drivers, any device supported by an operating system works well with Amanda. The System Administrator does not have to worry about breaking support for a device when upgrading Amanda.

Amanda uses native dump and/or GNU tar utilities. Since there are no proprietary formats, in case of emergency, data could be recovered with native utilities even without Amanda having been installed.

Unique scheduler optimizes backup level for different clients in such a way that total backup time is about the same for every backup run. Amanda frees the System Administrators from having to guess the rate of data change in their environments.

Amanda is stable and robust because of high-quality code (see report by Coverity).

Amanda project has a large and productive community that grows every day.

Amanda 2.5.0 adds strong security and improves scalability:
Support for Kerberos 4/5 and OpenSSH ensures secure communications between Amanda server and clients. Secure communication API allows customized security solutions.
Media can be encrypted with Symmetric or Asymmetric algorithms (aesutil or gpg).

Backup (dump) images can span multiple media volumes increasing the amount of data that can be protected in a single backup run.

Customized compression can be used for making the best match between hardware resources and data, e.g. one type of custom compression can be used for images and another for text files.

Auto labeling for tapes simplifies backup to disk with virtual tapes.

Amanda 2.5.0 server is compatible with Amanda 2.4.5 clients. System Administrators can start with upgrading Amanda server and then roll out upgrades to clients without interruptions to backup operations.


Download Amanda here

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Skype. Kazaa And Others Named In Rico Lawsuit

Defendant Skype Technologies S A, Niklas Zennstrom, Janus Friis, Kazaa, Bluemoon Ou and a slew of others have been named in a Rico Suit Filed by StreamCast Networks, of Houston, Texas


Docket Text

01/20/2006 1 COMPLAINT against defendants Kazaa BV, Joltid Ltd, Joltid Ou Blastoise Ltd, Bluemoon Ou, LA Galiote BV, Indigo Investment BV, Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc, Sharman Networks Ltd, Kevin Bermeister, John Does 1-10 inclusive, Skype Technologies S A, Niklas Zennstrom, Janus Friis.(Filing fee $ 250 paid) Jury Demanded. , filed by plaintiff StreamCast Networks Inc.(pj, ) (Entered: 01/27/2006)

01/20/2006

20 DAY Summons Issued re Complaint - (Discovery), Complaint - (Discovery)[1] as to Kazaa BV, Joltid Ltd, Joltid Ou Blastoise Ltd, Bluemoon Ou, LA Galiote BV, Indigo Investment BV, Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc, Sharman Networks Ltd, Kevin Bermeister, John Does, Skype Technologies S A, Niklas Zennstrom, Janus Friis. (pj,) (Entered: 01/27/2006)

Read more here

CentOS Linux Threatened By Oklahoma City

An Oklahoma town threatened to call in the FBI because its web site was hacked by Linux maker CentOS. Problem is CentOS didn't hack Tuttle's web site at all. The city's hosting provider had simply botched a web server.
This tale kicked off when Tuttle's city manager Jerry Taylor fired off an angry message to the CentOS staff. Taylor had popped onto the city's web site and found the standard Apache server configuration boilerplate that appears with a new web server installation. Taylor seemed to confuse this with a potential hack attack on the bustling town's IT infrastructure.

"Who gave you permission to invade my website and block me and anyone else from accessing it???," Taylor wrote to CentOS. "Please remove your software immediately before I report it to government officials!! I am the City Manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma."

Read the rest of this bizzare story here

Friday, March 24, 2006

MSFT: Office 2007 Also Late

Microsoft confirmed late Thursday that it is also pushing the mainstream launch of Office 2007 to next year.

As with Vista, Microsoft hopes to finish the code for Office 2007 this year. The company said that work will be completed by October, when it will make Office 2007 available to business customers that have signed up for Microsoft's volume licensing program.

And, again like Vista, Microsoft plans to ship retail and original equipment manufacturer versions of the product in January.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Sun Grid Hit By Denial Of Service Attack On First Day

Sun Microsystems' Grid, a publicly available computing service, was hit by a denial-of-service network attack on its inaugural day, the company said Wednesday.

To let people try out the Sun Grid, the company made a text-to-speech translation service publicly accessible for, for example, turning blog entries into podcasts. "It became the focus of a denial-of-service attack," Aisling MacRunnels, Sun's senior director of utility computing, said in an interview Wednesday.

In denial-of-service attacks, numerous computers--often groups of compromised PCs called botnets--simultaneously attack a target on the network. In this case, the attack took down the text-to-speech service.

The Sun Grid is one of several visionary ideas that the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company (Quote:SUNW) hopes will restore status and revenue that tapered away after the dot-com bubble burst and its own hardware and software lost much of its cachet.

GoDaddy To Move From Linux to Windows

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - News) today announced that GoDaddy.com, the world's leading domain name registrar, is transitioning approximately 4.5 million Web domains to be hosted on the Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting. Upon completion of the migration, Go Daddy will have moved all its parked domains from Linux to the Windows platform.

GoDaddy.com, known for its competitively priced, service-packed product offerings and high levels of customer service, is the world's No. 1 domain name registrar, both in terms of new registrations and domains under management. The company annually ranks as one of the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the country and has done so by offering consumers and small and medium-sized businesses a diverse range of Web hosting products and services that simplify the creation and management of their online presence.

The Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting supports GoDaddy.com's low-cost, high-value strategy by providing a technology platform that is security-enhanced, highly scalable and easy to manage. Further, through a growing ecosystem of independent software vendors (ISVs) creating applications based on the Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting, GoDaddy.com can introduce new services to its customers easily and cost-effectively. As an example, Go Daddy recently created delivery applications for both DotNetNuke and Telligent Systems' Community Server that give Windows-based hosters the ability to create dynamic Web-based applications that seamlessly integrate with their hosting accounts. In addition, Go Daddy recently developed and deployed its Quick Blog tool that permits the aggregation of bloggers in one large Windows-based application, giving each blogger a unique domain.

Alienware Bought By Dell

Dell Inc. confirmed Thursday that it had acquired boutique PC vendor Alienware, a move that will add some zing to the company's image.

Although Dell's acquisition was widely anticipated, Alienware chief executive Nelson Gonzalez said that his company will remain a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dell, continuing its own brand, design, sales and marketing, and support. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

For consumers, the purchase will mean that Alienware will now access Dell's well-known supply-chain efficiencies, ideally reducing wait times for new PCs that Alienware executives said have swelled to as much as a month or more. Interestingly, the deal also means that a PC containing a processor from Advanced Micro Devices will finally contribute to Dell's bottom line.

The Dell-Alienware deal was first "reported" by a blogger and rival, VoodooPC chief Raul Sood, who predicted that a then-rumored deal would make sense. "Why the potential for a Dellienware and not another? Alienware is widely considered to be the volume leader in gaming, they have scale,"

Being added to the Dell organization also means that the company can take advantage of the Dell supply chain and its relationships to suppliers like ATI, Intel, and Nvidia. According to Vena, customers were being forced to wait up to five weeks for new PCs using the latest technology, a trend that he said should be far easier to buck now that Alienware can tap into Dell's supply chain

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Vista Slips To 2007

Microsoft has pushed back the consumer release of Windows Vista to January 2007, because it isn't good enough to meet its Q4 2006 target.Instead, Microsoft has staggered the launch into two parts - subscribers to Microsoft's Volume Licensing Program will be able to get the code in November 2006, while OEMs can begin shipping it in January next year.

"We needed a few more weeks," said Windows boss Jim Allchin. "We decided to optimize it for the entire industry."

Allchin said the next beta (that's "CTP", or Community Technology Preview in Redmondspeak) was on track to go to 2 million testers. He was vague on the reasoning, but mentioned quality foremost.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Mozilla Lightning 0.1 Released

Mozilla Lightning 0.1 Released

From the mozillazine website:
The Calendar team is proud to announce the first official release of the new Lightning extension: Lightning 0.1 for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. This is a major milestone on the road to an integrated calendar for users of the award-winning mail-client Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5.

What is Mozilla Calendar?
We are striving to build a cross-platform fully standards based calendar client based on the open iCal standard. Our client is built using the XUL user interface language and is targeted at Mozilla-based browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Seamonkey and the Mozilla Application Suite.

Download it from here

2006 Jolt Product Excellence Award Winners



The 2006 Jolt Product Excellence Award Winners have been announced, these are the winners

BOOKS GENERAL

Jolt Winner: Prefactoring by Ken Pugh (O'Reilly)

Productivity Winners:
Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Open Source as Business Strategy by Ron Goldman, Richard P. Gabriel (Morgan Kaufmann)
Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project by Karl Fogel (O'Reilly)
The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun (O'Reilly)

BOOKS TECHNICAL

Jolt Winner: Agile Web Development with Rails by Dave Thomas, David Hansson, Leon Breedt and Mike Clark (Pragmatic Bookshelf)

Productivity Winners:
Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries by Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams (Addison-Wesley)
Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel (Apress)
Why Programs Fail: A Guide to Systematic Debugging by Andreas Zeller (Morgan Kaufmann)

ENTERPRISE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Jolt Winner: WelcomRisk 2.6 (Welcom)

Productivity Winners:
• Corticon Business Rules Management 4.0 (Corticon)
• JBoss 2 Portal (JBoss)
• Visual Studio Team System 2005 (Microsoft)

DATABASE ENGINES AND DATA TOOLS

Jolt Winner: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (Microsoft)

Productivity Winners:
• Berkeley DB 4.4 (Sleepycat Software)
• Google Maps API 2005 (Google)
• MySQL 5.0 (MySQL)

DEFECT TRACKING, CHANGE AND CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

Jolt Winner: Perforce SCM 2005 (Perforce)

Productivity Winners:
• FogBugz 4.0 (Fog Creek)
• Guiffy SureMerge 7.0 (Guiffy Software)
• JIRA 3.4 (Atlassian Software)

DESIGN TOOLS AND MODELING

Jolt Winner: Lattix LDM 2.0 (Lattix)

Productivity Winners:
• Borland Together 2006 for Eclipse (Borland)
• Enterprise Architect 6.0 (Sparx Systems)
• MindManager Pro 6.0 (Mindjet)

DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS

Jolt Winner: Visual Studio Team System 2005 (Microsoft)

Productivity Winners:
• Eclipse SDK 3.1 (Eclipse.org)
• IntelliJ IDEA 5.0 (JetBrains)
• Komodo 3.5 (ActiveState)

LIBRARIES, FRAMEWORKS AND COMPONENTS

Jolt Winner: .NET Framework 2.0 (Microsoft)

Productivity Winners:
• Dundas Chart for .NET 5.0 (Dundas Software)
• Qt 4.0 (Trolltech)
• Spring Framework 1.2.6 (SpringFramework.org)

MOBILE DEVELOPMENT TOOLS

Jolt Winner: Crossfire 5.6 (AppForge)

Productivity Winners:
• Carbide.c++ Express (Nokia)
• Flash Lite 2.0 (Adobe)
• NetBeans IDE 4.1 (Sun Microsystems)

QUALITY PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Jolt Winner: Rally 5.6 (Rally Software Development)

Productivity Winners:
• CollabNet Enterprise Edition with Project Dashboard/Task Management 2005 (CollabNet)
• QACenter Enterprise Edition 5.1 (Compuware)
• TargetProcess Suite 1.4 (TargetProcess)

SECURITY TOOLS

Jolt Winner: Elemental Compliance System 1.4 (Elemental)

Productivity Winners:
• CodeAssure 2.0 (Secure Software)
• DevPartner SecurityChecker 1.0 (Compuware)
• Fortify Security Tester 1.0 (Fortify)

TESTING TOOLS

Jolt Winner: VMTN Subscription 2005 (VMware)

Productivity Winners:
• Agitator 3.0 (Agitar Software)
• AQtime 4.7 (AutomatedQA)
• Clover 1.3 (Cenqua)

UTILITIES

Jolt Winner: Camtasia Studio 3.0 (TechSmith)

Productivity Winners:
• DevPartner Studio 8 (Compuware)
• Fog Creek Copilot 1.2 (Fog Creek Software)
• ReSharper 1.5 (JetBrains)

WEB DEVELOPMENT TOOLS

Jolt Winner: Rails 1.0 (rubyonrails.org)

Productivity Winners:
• JBoss Application Server 4x (JBoss)
• Macromedia Studio 8 2005 (Adobe)
• Zend Studio - Enterprise Edition 5.0 (Zend)

HALL OF FAME WINNER:

• Visual Studio Professional Edition (Microsoft)

Google Finance

Google on Tuesday launched a beta version of Google Finance, a Web site aggregating information about companies and mutual funds that features an interactive chart correlating news and other events with stock price spikes and falls.

Charts can be changed to show stock activity for different time periods by clicking and dragging, and they can be zoomed in on to get more detailed information. News stories that correspond to specific days are displayed on the side and are automatically adjusted to reflect the selected time period.

People have been able to get a stock quote by typing a ticker into the Google search bar. Now the Google Finance page will be one of the top links on the results page when a ticker is typed in the search bar.

Google Finance can be found at finance.google.com and links to it appear in a featured area at the top of general Google search results pages when users search for stock or corporate information that appear to be finance related.

Beneath the finance-focused search box at the top of the Google Finance main page are sections that provide summaries of the market, stock quotes and links to news, blogs and moderated-finance group discussions.

One of the more novel features of the site gives user the ability to view financial news alongside historical price charts over various time frames. As the user zooms back in time, the news results change with the date.

The site identifies financial stories within Google News, the company's existing news search site that features articles from roughly 4,500 different sources. By contrast, Yahoo's financial news relies on three dozen top editorial brands.

And while Yahoo was the first of the major Internet sites to incorporate blogging alongside news in its Yahoo News site, Google Finance is first to run blogs alongside financial news.

Ajax Toolkit Atlas Released By Microsoft

Microsoft announced a March CTP (Community Technology Preview) of the Asynchronous JavaScript and XML tool with a Go-Live license. The Atlas March CTP with Go-Live license enables developers to begin building and deploying new Atlas applications and to extend applications that they can redistribute commercially.

Past Go-Live licenses have been associated with late betas of products. However, customers have been asking for a Go-Live license, and Microsoft officials said Atlas code is stable enough. Developers, though, should be aware that there is no official support from Microsoft and that the upgrade path is to continue with future Go-Live CTP releases of Atlas.

Take a look at the MIX06:AJAX Video on Channel 9


From the MSDN site:
This new Web development technology from Microsoft integrates client script libraries with the ASP.NET 2.0 server-based development framework. In addition, 'Atlas' offers you the same type of development platform for client-based Web pages that ASP.NET offers for server-based pages. And because 'Atlas' is an extension of ASP.NET, it is fully integrated with server-based services. “Atlas” makes it possible to easily take advantage of AJAX techniques on the Web and enables you to create ASP.NET pages with a rich, responsive UI and server communication. However, "Atlas" isn’t just for ASP.NET. You can take advantage of the rich client framework to easily build client-centric Web applications that integrate with any backend data provider.

Some more videos can be found here

Visit the Atlas ASP.Net site

Monday, March 20, 2006

Fedora Core 5 Available For Download (Linux)

Fedora Core 5 CD images are now available for download (i386, ppc, x86_64) on the ftp servers or via the torrent page



Fedora Core 5 Linux Installation Notes
It has all the following:

Installation
Configuring your monitor
A warning about mixing repositories
Yum
Firefox and Thunderbird
nVidia and ATI graphics acceleration
True Type fonts
Fedora Extras
Yum Extender
Java
Flash
RealPlayer
Rhythmbox
Adobe Reader
Xine - a DVD and multimedia player
MPlayer - another multimedia player
XMMS - a music and MP3 player
Beep - another media player
VLC - the Videolan stand-alone media player
Amarok - a KDE multimedia player
Bittorrent and bittorrent-gui
Azureus for bittorrent
LimeWire - a Java P2P application
NTFS support
Web Server
FTP Server
PHP and Perl
MySQL
phpMyAdmin
Resources

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Pavlina Pavlina Pavlina

Pavlina has been the top search on technorati since yesterday. Who and what is Pavlina? I did a little research and this is what I discovered:

Pavlina Radoslavova is a Russian-trained concert pianist, and one of Bulgaria's most talented classical performers.

Starting the piano at the age of five, she quickly became noticed for her skills; winning several national and international piano competitions and the competitive entrance examinations that gave her access to Bulgaria's most talented piano professors.

By the age of nineteen, Radoslavova had entered into Bulgaria's most prestigious musical institution - the Bulgarian National Academy of Music; ranking in the top-three performers from over eighty five candidates.

Pavlina completed her first music degree under the famous Russian piano professors Julia and Konstantin Ganevi; passing with distinction.

Following her graduation, she went on to study for her Masters Degree in Music in the piano classes of the Russian piano professor Marina Kapazinska, which she also passed with distinction. She took a further specialisation in chamber music under professor Angel Stankov, then concertmaster of the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra.

Radoslavova won a position in the staff of the Bulgarian National Academy of Music in 1988 where she worked in the Operatic-, Symphonic- and Choral-Conducting department. She became head pianist in 1998 and remained at the academy until she relocated to England in September 2002.

To date, Pavlina has given solo performances, concerts and professional master-classes in over 14 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Asia

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Windows XP Mac OS X Dual-boot On Intel Mac

According to winxponmac.com, the contest has been won - $13,854 to narf2006 for submitting a working solution to dual-booting Windows XP and Mac OS X on an Intel-Powered mac. A thread on osx86project.org has confirmations from several testers that the procedure works on the 17" iMac, the Mac mini, and the MacBook Pro. Many sets of pictures and videos (such as this installation video) are floating around (and mentioned in the thread). The solution itself should be posted soon

GNOME 2.14 Released

GNOME 2.14 is the latest version of the popular, multi-platform free desktop environment, providing all the tools a user needs for everyday work, and a platform for developers to write new software.

GNOME's focus is ease of use, stability, and first class internationalization and accessibility support, so that GNOME and its applications are usable by anyone, anywhere. GNOME runs on a variety of platforms, including GNU/Linux (commonly called Linux), Solaris, HP-UX, BSD and Apple's Darwin. Work has been done in this release to make it easier to port GNOME tools to Windows as well.


The GNOME Desktop is released every six months with many new features, improvements, "bug" fixes and translations. GNOME 2.14 continues this tradition and includes many interesting new features and fixes for hundreds of reported bugs. To learn more about GNOME and the qualities that distinguish it from other computer desktop environments (like usability, accessibility, internationalization and freedom) visit the About GNOME page.

The GNOME 2.14 release contains all of the applications needed to provide basic user functionality including system menus, file management, web browsing and email. It also includes lots of common accessories like a calculator, dictionary, document reader, image viewer, multimedia player, text editor and UNIX terminal emulator. Thanks to its excellent developer platform, many other excellent Free and Open Source applications are also available for GNOME, included but not limited to Abiword, a fully featured word processor; Gnumeric, a powerful spreadsheeting application; the GNU Image Manipulation Program, a popular image editor similar to Photoshop; and Inkscape, a flexible vector graphics application.

You can find out about these and other great GNOME applications from the GNOME Project Listing or GNOMEfiles.org.

Google Readies Base For Retailers

Google is planning to create an online market for traditional retailers via its recently unveiled Google Base service. The search engine giant is looking to create a "virtual supermarket" by developing the service, which is currently undergoing beta testing.

Google EMEA head Nikesh Arora told the Financial Times that the search engine giant was targeting firms in sectors such as real estate as well as the more obvious retail segment of the market with the service. Google's "value add" is to index and package offers in an easy to use format. "Google Base is going to have a huge impact on retailers," he said.

Google Base is a significant development because up to now the service has been viewed as a classified ads service targeted at consumers. The creation of an ecommerce launch pad for retailers pitches Google against similar initiatives from the likes of Amazon and eBay

BitTorrent Video Store

One of the best-known names in peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, BitTorrent , plans to take a more active and profitable role in Internet video distribution by opening its own retail site

BitTorrent will enter a growing Internet video business, a phenomenon happening concurrently with the telcos' rollout of IPTV service. (See Content Deals May Swing IPTV Acceptance.) Some observers believe Internet video could remove some of the upside from the telcos' IPTV business case

Since 2001, BitTorrent has distributed its peer-to-peer technology to millions of file sharers at no cost. The company only last year became a corporation, and now plans to leverage its brand name to sell licensed video content on its own retail site

BitTorrent's flavor of P2P works and people like it. A source close to BitTorrent makes the point that many P2P file sharers have kids and jobs and backyards and would rather not do anything illegal. Those users, the source says, are likely to eschew legally dubious file sharing sites in favor of BitTorrent's paid video service.

BitTorrent delivers video files using a method known as "swarming." Small pieces of the file are gathered from the PCs of users who already have the content, then quickly reassembled on the downloader's PC. Swarming is far faster than a linear download from a central server somewhere.


Read the complete article here

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

In2TV Broadband Television Network Launched By AOL

AOL and Warner Bros. have launched In2TV, the first broadband television network, on AOL.com. The network is said to offer the largest collection of free on-demand TV shows on the Web, along with interactive features and viral videos that enable audiences to experience and interact with television programming in an entirely new way.The free on-demand TV shows include full episodes of favorite Warner Bros. programs from the past 40 years such as Welcome Back, Kotter, Chico & The Man, Alice, Growing Pains, Sisters, Kung Fu, Lois & Clark and many others.

In2TV begins to realize the true potential of Web-based TV by putting the viewer in charge of their own TV schedule online," said Kevin Tsujihara, President, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group. "This opens up new opportunities for platforms and program distributors alike and points to the prospect of exciting new paradigms in online and interactive entertainment soon to come

Read the rest here

MySQL Users Conference 2006


The 2006 MySQL Users Conference is taking place April 24-27, 2006 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California

The MySQL Users Conference is the largest gathering of MySQL developers, users, and DBAs. It is the only event where you will be able to join the core MySQL development team and over 1000 users, open source innovators, and technology partners under one roof. Register now

Keynotes

Welcome!
Arjen Lentz, Community Relations Manager, MySQL AB

State of the Dolphin
Kaj Arnö, MySQL AB
David Axmark, Co-Founder, MySQL AB

Bootstrapping: Starting an Open Source Business With Almost No Money!
Greg Gianforte, CEO, President, Chairman and Founder, RightNow Technologies
Michael (Monty) Widenius, CTO & Co-founder, MySQL AB


State of MySQL AB
Mårten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB

O'Reilly Radar
Tim O'Reilly, Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Open Source & Linux at HP: Community Development, Customer Success
Christine Martino, VP Linux and Open Source Organization, Hewlett-Packard

The Ubuntu Project: Improving Collaboration in the Free Software World
Mark Shuttleworth, Founder, Ubuntu / Canonical Ltd

Wikipedia, Open Source, and Knowledge Communities
Mitchell Kapor, Founder & Chair, Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF)

MySQL Movie Magic
Milton Ngan, Chief Architect, Weta Digital Ltd

Sessions by Topic

.NET/Mono

Architecture and Technology This in-depth technology topic is ideal for advanced MySQL architects and developers. Advanced users gain the knowledge to fine-tune and extend MySQL for their environments.

Business and Case Studies These sessions are great for IT Managers and IT Architects who are responsible for implementing MySQL and open source technologies. Session leaders share their experiences and best practices in designing, developing, deploying, and maintaining their MySQL applications.

Cluster, Replication, and Scale-out Delivering high-availability database applications can be challenging. These sessions present insights into successfully designing and implementing a high availability database infrastructure.

Community Projects Community Projects that use MySQL

Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Considering using MySQL to implement Data Warehouse or Data Marts? Emphasis in these sessions is on how the pluggable storage engine architecture of MySQL provides unique advantages to data warehouse implementations.

DBA Database Administration (DBA) and Security

Embedded MySQL Are you embedding MySQL or running MySQL in an embedded Operating System environment? This topic will cover embedded server library, libmysqld, and focus on how MySQL can be embedded with C, Python, Visual Basic, and other programming languages as well as with embedded Operating Systems.

General

Java This topic gives Java developers an in-depth look at Connector/J, and Connector/MXJ, in particular on how to use and optimize MySQL performance in Java applications.

LAMP Already using or considering making the open source LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) stack a core component of your software infrastructure? Learn how to use the LAMP stack to power massive websites while maintaining a cost-effective TCO.

MaxDB Organizations rely on SAP R/3 for their business critical systems. This topic focuses on using MaxDB as a cost-effective TCO replacement for high-cost proprietary databases in an SAP environment.

Migration Many companies are now targeting their database infrastructure for the next round of cost savings using open source technology. Delve into how to approach a migration project, what factors need to be considered, and which applications are best suited for migration to MySQL.

MySQL in Telecom Leading telecom organizations are choosing MySQL and MySQL Cluster to meet very stringent requirements in areas such as availability, reliability, performance, and service response time. The MySQL in Telecom sessions will feature telecom customers and MySQL experts who will share development and deployment best practices, performance tuning advice, administration and management expertise, as well as real-world implementation stories.

MySQL Network MySQL Network provides a comprehensive set of enterprise-grade software, support and services to ensure the highest levels of reliability, security and uptime. These sessions will focus on the lastest MySQL Network enhancements including new Advisors, to make developers and DBAs more productive using MySQL.

Performance Tuning and Benchmarks Interested in optimizing the performance of your MySQL databases? Focus will be on design considerations and techniques for optimal performance and how to use open source database benchmarks suites (e.g. OSDL DBT2).

Products & Services



MySQL Users Conference Tutorials

Planning, Deploying, and Diagnosing Problems of J2EE Applications on MySQL
Mark D. Matthews, MySQL AB

Secure Your PHP and MySQL Web Applications
Laura Thomson, Senior Web Developer, OmniTI

Certification Primer: MySQL 5.0 DBA I
Sarah Sproehnle, Senior Instructor, MySQL

MySQL Cluster Configuration, Tuning, and Maintenance
Johan Andersson, Principal Consultant, MySQL AB

Optimizing MySQL Applications Using the Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture
Arjen Lentz, Community Relations Manager, MySQL AB

Data Warehousing with MySQL
John Paul Ashenfelter, CTO, TransitionPoint

MySQL Performance Optimization
Peter Zaitsev, Senior Support Engineer, Lead of Performance Group, MySQL, Inc.
Tobias Asplund, MySQL AB


Certification Primer: MySQL 5.0 DBA II
Harrison Fisk, Trainer and Consultant, MySQL AB

New Features of MySQL 5.0 and 5.1 In-depth (Partitioning, Updateable Views, Triggers, Stored Procedures)
Jan Kneschke, Senior Developer, MySQLNetwork

Replication for Scaling and High Availability
Jeremy Cole, MySQL Geek, Yahoo! Inc.


MySQL Books

MySQL Cookbook
High Performance MySQL
MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide
The Definitive Guide to MySQL 5, Third Edition
MySQL Tutorial
MySQL in a Nutshell
MySQL Pocket Reference
Beginning MySQL Database Design and Optimization
MySQL Stored Procedure Programming
Pro MySQL
Beginning Databases with MySQL

Simple Storage Service (S3) Available From Amazon

Amazon announced S3 their new online storage solution for web applications, and now you can store unlimited amounts of data on Amazon servers for US$.15 per gigabyte, paid monthly

This is their stated design philosophy:

Scalable: Amazon S3 can scale in terms of storage, request rate, and users to support an unlimited number of web-scale applications. It uses scale as an advantage: Adding nodes to the system increases, not decreases, its availability, speed, throughput, capacity, and robustness.

Reliable: Store data durably, with 99.99% availability. There can be no single points of failure. All failures must be tolerated or repaired by the system without any downtime.

Fast: Amazon S3 must be fast enough to support high-performance applications. Server-side latency must be insignificant relative to Internet latency. Any performance bottlenecks can be fixed by simply adding nodes to the system.

Inexpensive: Amazon S3 is built from inexpensive commodity hardware components. As a result, frequent node failure is the norm and must not affect the overall system. It must be hardware-agnostic, so that savings can be captured as Amazon continues to drive down infrastructure costs.

Simple: Building highly scalable, reliable, fast, and inexpensive storage is difficult. Doing so in a way that makes it easy to use for any application anywhere is more difficult. Amazon S3 must do both.


The storage space is accessed by standard SOAP and REST interfaces, and networking is handled by HTTP and BitTorrent protocols. The data streams are encrypted with customer-specific keys, and access rights are supposed to be granular enough to provide private or public storage object by object, and user by user. Apart from the storage fee, you pay $0.20 per gigabyte transferred, but there are no minimum fees and no setup costs, so you pay as you go. And the Amazon APIs overall are quite generic and should be usable for writing services that have nothing to do with Amazon per se. It's a lightweight, scalable, flexible, and redundant storage solution, and Amazon says it's secure, too.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Red Hat Linux OS Update: Up to 256 Titanium Chips

Red Hat has shipped a fresh version of its high-end Linux operating system that pushes support for large x86 systems much higher.
Customers can now run Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Opteron and Xeon servers with up to 64 logical CPUs. The same processor count now applies for IBM's Power chips too. The small club of Itanium processor users already had the luxury of running Red Hat across 64-processor boxes.

Looking ahead, Red Hat has even more ambitious high-end plans. The OS update includes a preview package for running Linux across up to 256 Itanium chips and up to 128 Power chips. These figures apply to logical CPUs as well, so core counts will affect the total number of chips supported.

What else is in this update?

- Availability of a full set of updated installable CD ISO
with OS package updates and install-time support for
new hardware.

- Availability of updated Extras ISO images with third
party package updates.

Hardware support enhancements:
Improved support for larger system configurations with up to 64 logical CPUs on AMD64 and EM64T 64 bit platforms through a new "largesmp" kernel variant depending on hardware certification.
Up to 64 logical CPUs on PPC (and IA64 carried forward
from Update 2) with the existing "smp" kernel variant
depending on hardware certification.
Technology preview for support of very large system
configurations on IA64 (up to 256 logical CPUs) and PPC (up
to 128 logical CPUs).

** NOTE: These are the certification limits Red Hat is
currently aiming at depending on partner and customer
testing feedback. Theoretical limits referenced in the
Kernel notes might be higher.
Independent of any technology preview or theoretical
limit, the actual supported system configuration limits
that depend on real partner hardware to be certified
are documented on the Red Hat website at
http://www.redhat.com/en_us/USA/rhel/details/limits/

IA64 multi-core support
Driver updates including
cciss, hangcheck-timer, ipmi_devintf, ipmi_msghandler,
ipmi_poweroff, ipmi_si, ipmi_watchdog, mptbase, e1000, ixgb,
tg3, aacraid, ahci, ata_piix, iscsi_sfnet, libata, qla2100,
qla2200, qla2300, qla2322, qla2xxx, qla6312, sata_nv,
sata_promise, sata_svw, sata_sx4, sata_vsc, cifs

Driver additions including
bnx2, dell_rbu, ib_mthca, megaraid_sas, qla2400, typhoon

Security enhancements:
Execshield updates
Begin use of gcc FORTIFY_SOURCE build option in some
package updates
SELinux policy updates
Updated kernel key management support

System tools enhancements:
SystemTap dynamic system instrumentation tool enhancements
including technology preview for broader hardware architecture
support
Kernel crash dump analysis tool enhancements
Technology preview of the Frysk execution analysis framework,
for more information visit http://sourceware.org/frysk/
Updated OpenIPMI support

Storage enhancements:
Improvements to autofs / automount
Device-mapper snapshot and multipath I/O improvements
Support for 4GB-versions of Fibre Channel HBAs
NFS access control lists, asynchronous I/O

Networking enhancements:
Technology preview of Infiniband support via the OpenIB stack

Updated third-party Java packages on the Extras CD

Security updates, bug fixes, and feature enhancements to
numerous system packages

Monday, March 13, 2006

Linux:GnomeMeeting Successor Ekiga Realeased

After more than one year of work, Ekiga 2.00 is finally available. Ekiga is now the first Open Source software to support both SIP and H.323 in the same application. GnomeMeeting was already a pioneer among the Open Source Voice over IP softphones, and we hope that Ekiga will continue in this path.

Among the features, you can find:
Full SIP Support
Full H.323 Support
Audio and Video Support
Call Transfer (SIP and H.323)
Call Forwarding on Busy, No Answer, Always
Call Hold
DTMFs Support
Basic Instant Messaging
Ability to Register to Several SIP Accounts Simultaneously
Possibility to Use an Outbound Proxy (SIP) or a Gateway (H.323)
Message Waiting Indications (SIP)


Among the new features, you can find:
Better Audio Quality
Support for Wideband Codecs (16 kHz)
Echo Cancellation
Easier NAT traversal
Improved camera Support
Improved Video4Linux2 Support
DBUS Support

What is Ekiga?
Ekiga is a SIP and H.323 compatible VoIP, IP Telephony, and Video Conferencing application that allows you to make audio and video calls to remote users with SIP or H.323 hardware and software. It supports all modern VoIP features for both SIP and H.323.
Ekiga is the first Open Source application to support both H.323 and SIP, as well as audio and video. Ekiga was formerly known as GnomeMeeting.

To get started: Download Ekiga for your distribution and get a free SIP-Address at ekiga.net.
All in all: Free your speech!

Sopranos Google Map

I must admit I did miss the Sopranos, you just don't realize it until you start watching the show again. So Tony Soprano got shot by his uncle Junior. And of course they don't show the scenes for next week's episode since then you would know if he died or not. Well of course he didn't die, how can there be a Sopranos show without James Gandolfini. All in all this was a good episode (number 66 'Members Only') Johnny "Sack" Sacramoni is in jail. Baccala and Janice have a kid. some guy who wins 2 million dollars and tries to get out of the mob but can't ends up hanging himself. But the best part is thet when Tony is at his uncle's house and his uncle calls for him he pretends he is someone else and then uncle Junior shoots him and it ends with Anthony Soprano laying on the floor passing out

HBO has some interesting stuff on their website taks a look at Sopranos Google Maps

Accoona To Challenge Google?

Since Google reached its perch atop the Internet world, challengers have emerged from all over Silicon Valley. So why not from Jersey City, N.J.?

That's the home of Accoona.com, the latest entry on the list of would-be search engine kings. The privately held Jersey City -based company announced last week a search engine that it says uses a heavy dose of artificial intelligence to find results that Google and other search sites may miss. Accoona also announced an advertising model that, in the early going at least, has impressed some industry executives and observers.

The critical question, of course, is whether Accoona's search approach can win the allegiance of enough users to make advertisers notice. On that score, the company is betting that it can generate ample attention, both from grass-roots users and from buying TV and print ads with some of the $65 million it says it has, and become a household word.

What Is Accoona?
Accoona.com is a search engine with interactive tools that provides users with better web, business and news results; powered by proprietary Artificial Intelligence technology.

The name Accoona is derived from the Swahili phrase, Hakuna Matata, which means “don’t worry be happy.” Accoona CEO Stuart Kauder says, “The company name was chosen specifically with the end user in mind. Our goal is to make our users happy by helping them find relevant results to their queries.”

Founded in February 2004, Accoona Corporation, a pioneer in Artificial Intelligence (AI) search technology, unveiled the Accoona Search Engine in the United States and China in December 2004. The company is taking the competitive search engine sector to the next level, leveraging its advanced search technologies, experienced executives, and strong relations with China – the second largest online population in the world - and soon to be the world’s largest.

Ubuntu: Root Password Readable in Clear Text

An extremely critical bug and security threat was discovered in Ubuntu Breezy Badger 5.10 earlier today by a visitor on the Ubuntu Forums that allows anyone to read the root password simply by opening an installer log file. Apparently the installer fails to clean its log files and leaves them readable to all users. The bug has been fixed, and only affects The 5.10 Breezy Badger release. Ubuntu users, be sure to get the patch right away

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Opera 9 Passes Web Standards Acid 2 test

Opera 9 now passes the Acid 2 test, making it the second browser to do so. And yes, I can count. Safari passed first, and Opera is second. Konqueror and iCab almost pass (and claim to pass), but they both fail to apply one of the styles required by the test, and as a result they display a scrollbar even though they shouldn't

What is the Acid2 test?

Acid2 is a test page, written to help browser vendors ensure proper support for web standards in their products. Please take the Acid2 test!

If you'd like more in-depth information about the Acid2 test, click on a detailed technical guide that explains how the test works.

This is how the page looks in Opera 9

IBM To Simplify The Data Warehouse

IBM has just announced the second strand in its strategy for simplifying data warehousing. It contends, rightly, that deploying and managing an enterprise data warehouse is horrendously complicated. Moreover, those complications directly drive costs up. So, it is simplifying the data warehouse and driving costs down.

The first strand in this strategy was last autumn, when IBM introduced the BCU (Balanced Configuration Unit). This is a combination of two things: first, it is a hardware platform that has been optimised to run DB2 along with best practices that IBM has learned over the years about partitioning, indexes, tuning, and so forth—all of these are pre-implemented for you within the BCU. We might call this a hemi-appliance in the sense that while a good deal of tuning and optimisation has been undertaken; it isn’t a complete bi-lateral optimisation as you would get in a full-blown conventional data warehouse appliance.

Warehousing Edition, which is version 9.1 (presaging the forthcoming Viper release of DB2 UDB). The main theme of this release is, again, to simplify the environment for data warehousing administrators. The main way IBM has done this is by integrating a number of existing (and new) tools and bundling them together.

There will be two editions: the Base Edition will include Cube Views (which will no longer be available as a stand-alone option), Data Modelling (new, developed by the Rational group), OLAP modeling and the Integrated Installer, as well as the database itself. The Enterprise Edition will include all of this plus the Data Partitioning Feature, Query Patroller, Intelligent Miner (also no longer available as a separate product), Alphablox, a web-based Admin Console that spans all of the products in the suite, the Design Studio (which is an Eclipse-based design environment that includes the Data Flow and Data Mining Editors as well as the aforementioned Data and OLAP modeling), and the SQL Warehousing Tool (which allows you to build in-warehouse transformations).

Read the rest here

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Slobodan Milosevic (Butcher Of The Balkans) Dead

President Slobodan Milosevic was found dead on his prison cell bed in a U.N. detention center in The Hague, Netherlands, where he was being tried before a U.N. war crimes tribunal. He was 64.

An official in the chief prosecutor's office said Milosevic's body was found at about 10 a.m. Saturday and he probably had been dead for several hours.

A Dutch medical team will conduct an autopsy Sunday, with a senior pathologist from the Serbian capital of Belgrade attending, a tribunal official told CNN.

Milosevic's death came just a few months shy of the expected completion of his marathon trial, which has lasted more than four years.

The fall of Slobodan Milošević
Downfall of Presidency

Milošević recognized the opposition victories in some local elections, having contested the results for 11 weeks.

Constitutionally limited to two terms as Serbian president, on 23 July 1997, Milošević assumed the presidency of the Yugoslav Federation (currently Serbia and Montenegro). Armed actions by Albanian separatist groups and Serbian police and military counter-action in Serbia's previously autonomous (and 90% Albanian) province of Kosovo culminated in escalating warfare in 1998, NATO air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between March and June 1999, and finally a full withdrawal of all Yugoslav security forces from the province.

During the Kosovo War he was indicted on 27 May 1999, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Kosovo, and he was standing trial, up until his death, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which he asserted was illegal, having been established in contravention of the UN-charter.

The Yugoslav constitution called for a two round election with all but the two leading candidates eliminated for the second round. Official results put Koštunica ahead of Milošević but at under 50%. Opinion polls suggested that supporters of most of the minor candidates would go to Milošević as would numbers of people who abstained in the first round but would oppose an opposition supported by the NATO powers.

Milošević's rejection of claims of a first-round opposition victory in new elections for the Federal presidency in September 2000 led to mass demonstrations in Belgrade on 5 October and the collapse of the regime's authority. Opposition-list leader Vojislav Koštunica finally took office as Yugoslav president on 6 October when Milošević publicly accepted defeat. Ironically, Milošević lost his grip on power by losing in elections which he scheduled prematurely (before the end of his mandate) and which he did not even need to win in order to retain power which was centred in the parliaments which his party and its associates controlled. This downfall is called the Bulldozer Revolution.

Following a recently issued warrant for his arrest by the Yugoslav authorities on charges for corruption/abuse of power, Milošević eventually surrendered to security forces on Saturday, 31 March 2001. On 28 June of the same year, Milošević was transfered by government officials from Yugoslavian to United Nations custody just inside Bosnian territory. He was then transported to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, although the Constitution explicitly prohibited extradition of Yugoslav citizens. Koštunica formally opposed the transfer.

Trial
Following Milošević's transfer, the original charges of war crimes in Kosovo were upgraded by adding charges of genocide in Bosnia and war crimes in Croatia. On 30 January 2002, Milošević accused the war crimes tribunal of an "evil and hostile attack" against him. The trial began at The Hague on 12 February 2002, with Milošević defending himself while refusing to recognize the legality of the court's jurisdiction.

His popularity among the Serbs and Yugoslavs again rose sharply once the trial had begun, as his supporters see it as a travesty of justice and violation of national sovereignty.

Milošević had a team in Belgrade that helped him, often sending him information available from the secret police files. Serbian insiders often supported Milošević's point of view, while Bosnian and Croatian witnesses have offered a lot of testimonies supporting the indictments. The tribunal has to prove he had command responsibility in Croatia and Bosnia, at least de facto, since formally as a President of Serbia at the time he was not in charge. His influence may have gone beyond his formal duties, but there is little to no record of this.

Milošević was not considered by some contemporaries to be a radical nationalist himself (although some of his followers were). Milošević's rhetoric did not make use of hate speech.

At one point during the Yugoslav wars, Serbia had rejected further cooperation with the Croatian Serbs (the Republic of Serbian Krajina), and also with the Bosnian Serbs (the Republika Srpska, in 1993, when Serbia closed the border over the Drina river). After the Dayton Agreement in 1995, the Serbian nationalists (Vojislav Šešelj's radical party) became his sturdy opponents, up until 1998 when they joined his party in a coalition government.

The trial is still a controversial issue and has featured many conflicting and strange testimonies, which are viewed by all sides of the argument to support theories of cover-ups and dishonesty by the opposing parties. For example:

the statement by William Walker, the US former ambassador to El Salvador during its war, that he did not remember phoning several senior US officials to say that, at Racak, he had discovered a justification for a NATO war, but did not dispute that officials who said they had received his calls were telling the truth,
the testimony by General Wesley Clark that Milošević had come to him privately at a conference to admit to prior knowledge of the Srebrenica massacre and in the same evidence that NATO had no links to the KLA,
the statement by Rade Marković that a written statement he had made implicating Milošević had been extracted from him by ill-treatment legally amounting to torture by named NATO officers,
the statement by Lord Owen (author of the Vance Owen Plan) that Milošević was the only leader who had consistently supported peace and that any form of racism was personally "anathema" to him.
The prosecution took two years to present its case in the first part of the trial, where they covered the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Throughout the two-year period, the trial was being closely followed by the publics of the involved former Yugoslav republics as it covered various notable events from the war and included several high-profile witnesses.

Milošević got increasingly ill during this time (high blood pressure and severe flu), which caused intermissions and prolongued the trial by at least six months. In early 2004, when he finally appeared in court in order to start presenting his defense (announcing over 1,200 witnesses), the two ICTY judges decided to appoint him two defense lawyers in accordance with the medical opinions of the resident cardiologists. This action was opposed by Milošević himself and the pair of British lawyers appointed to him.

In October 2004, the trial was resumed after being suspended for a month to allow counsel Steven Kay, who complained Milošević was not cooperating, to prepare the defense. Steven Kay has since asked to be allowed to resign from his court appointed position, complaining that of the 1200 witnesses he has only been able to get five to testify. Many of the other witnesses refused to testify in protest of ICTYs decision not to permit Milošević to defend himself.

In November 2004, former Soviet Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov became the first high profile witness to testify for the defence.

If a prima facie case for either claim were established, the ICTY would be legally obliged under its terms of reference to prepare an indictment against the leaders of most of the NATO countries, even though the Prosecutor already concluded an "inquiry" against the NATO leaders.

Friday, March 10, 2006

No Vista For Mac Intel PC's

Microsoft revealed today that it will not support EFI booting for Windows Vista on its launch. The news will be a shock for owners of Intel Macs who had hoped they would be able to dual-boot between Windows Vista and OS X. Intel Macs only support booting via EFI.

Speaking at Intel Developer Forum San Francisco, Microsoft development manager, Andrew Ritz, also revealed that there will never be any support for booting Windows via EFI on systems with 32-bit processors.

Although Microsoft has previously said EFI booting would be supported by Vista, Ritz admitted that EFI support won't be seen in any version of Windows until the release of Longhorn Server.

It will not be available in the release version of Windows Vista later this year – Microsoft says people will have to wait for an unspecified 'subsequent release of Windows client'. Ritz could not say whether that would be a service pack update to Vista or the next-generation of Windows.

That's terrible news for Intel Mac users who have been hoping that they could dual-boot Windows and Mac OS X on their new Macs: not only are their processors not 64-bit (and thus will never be supported by Windows EFI booting) but Windows Vista won't boot on EFI anyway.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Novell To Use SUSE Name Again (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop)

Novell today unveiled its next-generation enterprise Linux* desktop, delivering technology and design improvements that establish the Linux desktop as a benchmark for basic office productivity and usability. The new Linux desktop, SUSE® Linux Enterprise Desktop, is a comprehensive, full-function desktop containing technology innovations and usability breakthroughs including enhanced power management, integrated desktop search, high-performance graphical interfaces and numerous application improvements based on open source innovation. As a result, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop sets a new standard for business desktops, delivering the market-leading usability, powerful integrated office functionality and rock-solid stability needed to drive productivity at a fraction of the cost of current Microsoft* desktop offerings.

“Although the momentum behind Linux continues to be strong, until today, general business users have not really been a part of the story,” said Gary Barnett, research director at Ovum. “With today's introduction of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, Novell is keeping a promise it made last year, to invest in delivering a desktop that is designed for the business user, rather than for experienced Linux users. Novell deserves credit for addressing the issue of usability head-on, by delivering a desktop that really can meet the needs of the basic knowledge worker.”

Novell conducted hundreds of distinct usability tests and shot almost 1,500 hours of user interaction video that it used to aid the design of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. Each feature of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, such as setting desktop preferences, finding files, launching applications, using external devices like USB memory sticks, working with the Internet, and connecting to local and wireless networks, was rigorously tested and refined for usability to ensure the best possible performance in a business environment.

“With Novell Linux Desktop 9, Novell delivered an outstanding solution for transactional and fixed-function desktops,” said Jeff Jaffe, executive vice president and chief technology officer for Novell. “With its successor, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, we are now positioned to serve the sweet spot of the market, the general office worker. This desktop is already generating great interest in businesses of all sizes, and it represents a tremendous new opportunity for Novell.”

Powerful Desktop Capabilities
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is the first fully supported enterprise desktop to deliver OpenOffice.org 2.0, the leading open source office suite. OpenOffice includes a powerful spreadsheet program, business presentations tool and word processor. The Novell® edition of OpenOffice.org will support many Visual Basic macros, closing one of the chief compatibility gaps between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org 2.0 can save and open documents created in Microsoft Office formats including Excel pivot tables, and it is the only office suite available today that fully supports the OpenDocument file format, the new public standard for document files. Because OpenDocument is a public standard maintained by the open source community, it eliminates vendor lock-in by ensuring information saved in spreadsheets, documents and presentations is freely accessible to any OpenDocument-supporting application.

To simplify migration to Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is designed to work with Microsoft Windows*, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Exchange. SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop supports all standard network and printing protocols and integrates seamlessly in existing Active Directory environments. OpenOffice.org 2.0 reads and writes Microsoft document formats, and the Novell EvolutionTM e-mail client includes an integrated connector for Microsoft Exchange. Lotus Notes* and Domino* users will be able to access Notes applications, databases and e-mail using IBM's planned Lotus Notes Application plug-in for the IBM* Workplace Client Technology. Novell GroupWise®, of course, is completely supported on SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.

With file and content searching completely integrated into the user experience, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop frees business users from the perils of navigating the file system, allowing immediate access to documents, graphics, e-mail messages, chat sessions, Web pages and other content by typing just a keyword. In Novell's usability tests, respondents overwhelmingly preferred the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop search capabilities to Windows.

Nat Friedman, vice president of Linux desktop engineering for Novell, said, “Every IT administrator in the world should be eager to evaluate the improvements and functionality in this Linux desktop, and the cost savings that come with it. When we started work on SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, we didn't want to build the best Linux desktop for business, we wanted to build the best desktop for business, period. By listening to users, we believe we have created a business desktop that leapfrogs the market.”

Complete Customer Solution
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is designed to be easy for businesses to deploy and maintain. During the term of their subscription, users receive full access to the Novell Customer Center, an online portal that provides instant, automated access to new software releases, patches and technical updates. For large deployments, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is fully integrated with Novell ZENworks® Linux Management.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop features fast boot technology, improved power management and suspend, enhanced wireless device integration, Bluetooth* support and better application security with Novell AppArmor. Unlike Windows, which requires additional software purchases to create a desktop with equivalent features, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is complete, delivering a secure operating system, office suite, Web browser, instant messenger client, file management, integrated desktop search and automated software management tools in one solution.

The comprehensive nature of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop eliminates many IT costs typically associated with the deployment of Windows desktops. Based on MSRP, a subscription for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop will be less than 10 percent of the combined cost of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is scheduled to be available in the summer of 2006