Archive for July, 2009

Why aren’t schools adopting open source?

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Recently, I had a bit of a run-in with my daughter’s high school. She was undergoing an eSchool class over the summer called “Computer Applications,” and it turns out the class only actually “covered” Office Suites, namely Microsoft Office. Now in our household we do not own a copy of Microsoft Office. Instead, we use OpenOffice and have never had an issue - that is, until now.

Educational institutions are supposed to be a pillar of learning and intelligent decisions. But it seems, as far as software is concerned, our educational system is consistently making some fairly unintelligent choices.

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Edubuntu 9.04 Released

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

The Edubuntu team is proud to announce Ubuntu 9.04 Educational Addon, continuing Edubuntu’s tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source educational software with the high-quality, easy-to-use Ubuntu distribution.

Available application bundles include:
* Preschool - appropriate for children less than 5 years old
* Primary - appropriate for children aged 5 - 12 years old
* Secondary - appropriate for students aged 13 - 18 years old
* Tertiary - appropriate for university-level education

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Build A Real Time Audio Studio

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Although it might not seem like it, properly dealing with audio requires an intricately tuned PC. The main issue is audio latency, which refers to both the time it takes for a sound to enter your machine and the time it takes for your machine to produce a sound. In everyday use, we don’t really notice this latency. When you click on a button that makes a beep, you don’t care that it might take several hundred milliseconds for the sound to reach your ears. But in the delicate world of audio engineering, several hundreds of milliseconds is far too long, and even a delay of just tens of milliseconds is undesirable.

Luckily, Linux is a highly configurable operating system, and this means that you can create the perfect audio platform just by making a few tweaks. We’ve chosen the latest version of Ubuntu to be our guinea pig.

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NEC Pledges WiMAX Software To Moblin Project

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

NEC announced its plans to support the Moblin project at “Wireless Japan 2009,” a three-day expo in Tokyo this week. A computer translation of the announcement suggests that NECs contributions will include Linux drivers for WiMAX radio chipsets.

The NEC chipsets, in turn, will be used in mobile devices and car navigation systems from NEC and its “NEC AccessTechnica” subsidiary. Broadband-connected car navigation systems will deliver significantly more information about local businesses than today’s simple point-of-interest databases, the announcement notes.

WiMAX is a trade organization maintaining standards around IEEE 802.16 wireless technology. WiMAX technology was originated by Intel about eight years ago, and currently seems poised on the brink of widespread adoption.

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A Hands on and Review of Ubuntu One

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) has recently released a beta version of their online file syncing service – UbuntuOne for public testing. This file syncing service is similar to the popular Dropbox service and it allows you to share and sync file across different computers.

In this tutorial, we are going to take a quick look at its functionality and how you can install UbuntuOne in your Ubuntu machine.

Adobe open sources Flash platforms

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

On Tuesday Adobe launched the Open Source Media Framework (OSMF), a rich media player platform. OSMF was previously part of a project codenamed Strobe.

Adobe also open sourced the Text Layout Framework (TLF), a typography platform for Web apps.

“Adobe is committed to providing core Flash platform technologies to the community as open source,” said Dave McAllister, director of standards and open source at Adobe, in a statement. “By releasing OSMF and TLF as open source, we are helping facilitate the creation and sharing of best practices for media players and rich text-based Web application development.”

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Apple Downplays Fiery iPod Incidents

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

An exclusive KIRO 7 Investigation reveals an alarming number of Apple brand iPod MP3 players have suddenly burst into flames and smoke, injuring people and damaging property.

It’s an investigation that Apple has apparently been trying to keep out of the public eye.

It took more than 7-months for KIRO 7 Consumer Investigator Amy Clancy to get her hands on documents concerning Apple’s iPods from the Consumer Product Safety Commission because Apple’s lawyers filed exemption after exemption. In the end, the CPSC released more than 800 pages which reveal, for the very first time, a comprehensive look that shows, on a number of occasions, iPods have suddenly burst into flames, started to smoke, and even burned their owners.

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Open Source for America Promotes FOSS for Government

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

As the US struggles with a continuing recession, both the private and public sectors are looking for ways to cut or mitigate operating costs, particularly in the arena of information technology.

Starting today, a new coalition of technology industry companies, organizations, and academic institutions will be actively promoting one sure way of cutting IT costs: using open source software and open technology solutions.

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The Wide-Open Career Landscape of FOSS Tech Support

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

The growing popularity of free open source software (FOSS) is a sure sign that consumers and software developers alike are becoming more disenchanted with costly proprietary products. However, the promise of free software can be tarnished when software packages need configuration help and that help proves hard to find. When users have to wade through dozens of forum messages seeking a solution, the FOSS philosophy can turn into a turn-off.

As free software use grows in business, so will the demand for qualified tech help. The demand for open source support specialists is growing at a tremendous rate, according to Kim Weins, senior vice president of products and marketing at OpenLogic.

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Open Source Word Processors Give You Lots of Free Choices, Part 1

Saturday, July 18th, 2009

With interest heating up around Linux on netbooks, notebooks and desktop PCs, more and more people are hunting for good word processing software that runs on Linux. Luckily, while a lot of word processing options for Linux have fallen by the wayside, new ones keep springing up, too. Meanwhile, some of the older standbys are picking up features that rival those of Microsoft Word.

The end result is a wide range of choices for Linux across several different categories of software. Whether you want to crank out your master’s thesis or dash off a few quick business letters, you can take your pick from among dozens of different open source word processors, “proprietary” Linux word processors, open source desktop publishing (DTP) programs, and online offerings.

To help users sift through the choices, Linux.com is launching a series of articles about software in these four categories. For starters, we’ll dive into a sampling of five different applications: OpenOffice.org Write; AbiWord; KWord; LYX, and e:doc.

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