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News Alert


Linux and Open Source News for 5th December 2005

Linux Downloads

previous    Digital Media    next


  popularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularity

Source: Digital Music News: Top Stories

RealNetworks launched its web-based version of Rhapsody on Monday morning, opening access from any connected browser across Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. That is a nice ad


Source: The Digital Music Weblog

As Sharky noted, RealNetworks launched
Rhapsody.com (beta) today—a Web version of the Rhapsody jukebox and subscription service. Huge news! I’ve been awaiting
this iteration eagerly. As a classic Rhapsody user who sits in front of a computer all day, I value the celestial
jukebox and playlisting features more than the
newly-added portability of Rhapsody To Go.
Carrying an MP3 player is fine, but when I’m sitting at a strange machine I miss my Rhapsody, and downloading the big
Rhapsody client is usually out of the question. A Web version implies easy access to my playlists and the Rhapsody
1.4M-track catalog from any connected computer.

But it’s not that easy, in two ways:

Rhapsody.com does require a download to hear any music. Downloading is usually impossible on public
computers, and sometimes unwelcome on a friend’s computer. This downer seems unnecessary; I’m not a technical sort,
but I do know that other sites provide in-line listening without a player download. The Rhapsody Music Engine (named,
presumably, with apologies to Yahoo!’s Music Engine) does not offer any particular bell or whistle that would justify
the download from a usability perspective.

In the current beta incarnation, my playlists are not available in Rhapsody.com. The entire catalog is there, but
long-time users want access to their big Rhapsody libraries. There are no “Add” buttons, so you can’t even build an
alternate Web library.

So … disappointment is my first impression. Rhapsody.com apparently isn’t built expressly for my needs, for some
reason. But it does open a modified Rhapsody experience to Mac and Linux users, and that is a major point. The
modification—lack of ability to save tracks and albums to a personal library—is all but crippling, in my opinion. New
users who open free accounts (you do have to register, even if you don’t subscribe) get 25 on-demand streams free of
charge, which is generous in the current service environment but really isn’t enough to work with playlisting tools. So
those features would probably be wasted on the holdouts. But Mac and Linux paid subscribers who are not given a client
(the Rhapsody program does not support those platforms) are getting a seriously denatured Rhapsody experience.

So. New users with free reigstrations get those 25 tracks on demand, plus unlimited listening to 25 Rhapsody
stations (no skipping ahead during station playback). Current subscribers get nothing, really—no added portability when
travelling. Even though personal playlisting is not supported on Rhapsody.com, shared user playlists created in the
client are available for listening.

The Music Engine is an unsizable browser popup with basic streaming functions. Unfortunately, the Rhapsody Music
Engine does not recognize when the main Rhapsody.com display is open in a browser during music searches launched from
the Music Engine; it opens a new browser window to display search results. Fortunately, Rhapsody.com does
recognize the RME window, so changing streams does not make a new popup.

Current members might be disappointed to realize that not only is the personal library missing, but Rhapsody.com
does not seem to recognize the user at all. The My Rhapsody section comes up empty for me; no recommendations.

The Upshot

Rhapsody.com seems more like a bookmark than mature service. It is in beta; slack must be cut. The giant missing
element is playlisting, and I’d like to see the Music Engine reduced to a javascript, java, or Ajax popup. Ideally,
this thing should work from any computer without downloading a single byte, and it should recognize current subscribers
with open arms and full functionality. If Rhapsody.com remains a mere come-on to newbies, disappointment will be
severe.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.







Ads by Google


Source: The Digital Music Weblog

It’s been a busy weekend for music fans with high speed internet service. First
Oboe, then rumours about Apple’s upcoming
web based music service, and now this: Real
Networks is now testing a web based version of Rhapsody where Windows, Apple,
and Linux users will be able to listen to music for free, without having to download a separate application. Non
subscribers will be limited to 25 listens a session, and the service does not yet offer downloads, only streaming,
but this is a turning point of sorts. As RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser

says: “If it turns out the vast majority decide they want to listen for free, that’s great because the Internet
advertising market is doing pretty well too,”. If a sustainable business model comes out of this, how far are we from
unlimited free streaming music? Not very far at all apparently…

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.







Ads by Google


Source: Gizmodo

More CES news from Aopen, which claims that we'll get a peek at the first Intel Viiv small form factor PCs at the big show in Januray. The miniPC runs both Windows and Linux and Viiv machines will probably use both Intel's Pentium and its Yonah notebook processors. Of course, I'm sure there'll be about a kabillion other Viiv products lolling around CES, but I do have a soft spot for these little Aopen PCs.

Aopen to launch Viiv machine soon [The Inquirer]



previous    Distro Watch    next


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: nonux Size: 582.88 MB Status: 1 seeders and no leecher Added: 2005-12-05 23:33:47


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: Tilix Size: 704.83 MB Status: 3 seeders and no leecher Added: 2005-12-05 20:17:33


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: Vector Size: 697.59 MB Status: 3 seeders and 2 leechers Added: 2005-12-05 06:43:35


  popularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularity

Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: Mepis Size: 626.36 MB Status: 3 seeders and 1 leechers Added: 2005-12-05 04:53:15


  popularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularity

Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: dyne:bolic Size: 425.49 MB Status: 1 seeders and no leecher Added: 2005-12-05 03:48:57


  popularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularity

Source: weekly

This week in DistroWatch Weekly: Commentary: Backporting major software packages Miscellaneous news: Interview with Branden Robinson, Linux XP, TuxForums.org Featured distribution of the week: Archie Live CD Donations: KANOTIX receives 210 New on waiting list: Bentux Linux, Movitos USB Linux, OCSID Read more in this week's issue .


  popularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularity

Source: nonux

The development of Nonux, a Slackware-based distribution designed for office use and optimised for Dutch speakers, continues at a rapid pace. The new version 2.1 comes with an updated kernel 2.6.14.3 and the latest Firefox browser 1.5. Several bug fixes and additional display options for NVIDIA graphics drivers .



previous    General    next


Source: RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix

Basic tutorial on using SSH. "Let's start with one of the basics. If you log into a remote machine frequently, you might be tired of typing your password over and over again. You can set up SSH so that you can authenticate without typing a password.

First, you'll need to create an authentication key for SSH. This will actually consist of a key pair: a private key and a public key. To create your keys, run the command:" Linux.com | CLI Magic: More on SSH


Source: RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix

Nice review of Xandros Surfside Linux."A friend, "a virus-riddled, we-don'-need-no-steenkin'-firewall, smartass friend" who spends more time cleaning and reformatting than he does actually using his computer, asked me to help him set up a new system. The main criteria was that the system had to be bulletproof. The main uses for the system were to be e-mail, web browsing, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and a little bit of word processing. Internet connectivity had to include a wireless


Source: internetnews.com: Top News

RealNetworks' new service supports Linux and Apple's Safari browser.


Source: OSNews

"One and a half years. A large number of developers contributing. High expectations and a lot of pressure. The wait is over, GStreamer 0.10 has arrived. GStreamer 0.10 is a huge step forward for GNU/Linux and Unix multimedia. Power, stability, functionality, deployment, industry support, GStreamer 0.10 has it all."


Source: OSNews

"Over two years ago a group was founded to reverse engineer the Broadcom Wireless LAN chipsets to provide Linux drivers. This chipset is used by many OEMs, for example in Apple's AirPort Extreme in Power- and iBooks, Linksys' WAP and WRT series of consumer grade wireless routers, various laptops from Acer, Dell, Gateway, HP and others and many more external and internal devices, including CardBus cards. That work has now come (.pdf) to a first milestone as there now is a free (GPL2 or later) Linux driver for a variety of these chipsets."


Source: OSNews

Xen 3.0 has been released. "We've been seeing good stability on the XenRT regression tests for the last couple of weeks, and the number of bug reports submitted to bugzilla have dropped right down." Get it here. "Along with the usual binary install tarball, we've created a new live-iso demo CD, and some RPM packages for common linux distros."


Source: Boing Boing

Cory Doctorow:
Sony's DRM supplier XCP ripped off a free software project so that it could defeat Apple iTunes.

Remember when Sony got nailed for including code an open-source crack for iTunes in its rootkit DRM? Princeton researcher Alex Halderman has been patiently teasing apart the rootkit, looking for an explanation. Why would Sony's arms-merchant rip off an anti-DRM program for its DRM?

Halderman concludes that the XCP -- the Sony rootkit -- was intended to be used to crack open iTunes and insert Sony's music into it, without allowing Sony customers to convert their music into MP3s along the way.

This exposes one of the things about DRM that most people miss: it doesn't really matter what permissions a given DRM grants or prohibits (as fun as it might be to point out the absurdity of a DRM that keeps you from listening to your own music). The important thing about DRM is that it gives the company or consortium that controls the DRM control over who can use the DRM.

So Apple can make an iPod and shut Real and Microsoft and Sony out of it. Napster can make a subscription music service and shut Apple out of it. And so on.

Reverse-engineering Apple's DRM is hard, but not overwhelmingly so. Jon Johansen and his pals generally went through each new release like a hot knife through butter (Jon's got a new job and says he's putting his Apple-coring hobby on hold for a while, so the iTunes 6 version of DRM has stood for longer than its predecessors).

So when Sony's arms-dealer was making its munitions, it added an attractive new feature for Sony and others: the ability to break DRM to sneak music into iTunes.

The answer is that XCP utilizes the DRMS code not to remove Apple DRM but to add it. I’ve discovered that XCP uses code from DRMS as part of a hidden XCP feature that provides iTunes and iPod compatibility. This functionality has shipped on nearly every XCP CD, but it has never been enabled or made visible in the XCP user interface. Despite being inactive, the code appears to be fully functional and was compatible with the current version of iTunes when the first XCP CDs were released. This strongly suggests that the infringing DRMS code was deliberately copied by XCP’s creator, First4Internet, rather than accidentally included as part of a more general purpose media library used for other functions in the copy protection system.

Link

Previous installments of the Sony Rootkit Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)


Source: Ars Technica

Real Networks migrates their Rhapsody music service to a web-based app and adds support for Linux and Mac users. What else do they have planned?


Source: Slashdot Org latest news headlines

Asklepius M.D. writes "According to Marketwatch, RealNetworks is releasing a web based version of Rhapsody called ..Rhapsody.com that will function on other-than-IE browsers including Firefox and Safari. The article quotes Jupimedia analyst Joe Wilcox as saying " it brings the first real subscription music service to Mac and Linux-based products.""


Source: Developer Shed

CHMOD chmod is a UNIX oriented command that means Changing Mode. It lets you change the mode hence the name of the file or directory ies depending on how the chmod command is used. When I say changing mode I mean giving the file a different permission scheme respectively strong read strong strong write strong and strong execute strong . This command by the way is one of the most useful and most used commands in Linux .

(Advertisement) Refurbished and Used Networking Equipment Network Liquidators sells refurbished and used networking equipment for up to 95% off list, with a 1 year warranty. We buy and sell top brands like Cisco, Extreme, Foundry, and more. Call us for best pricing.


Source: Slashdot Org latest news headlines

An anonymous reader writes "IBM announced this weekend that early next year it will begin supporting the OpenDocument standard in its WorkPlace line of products. They're planning on pushing this widely accessible format and their products in developing nations." From the article: "Rather than create an analog to Microsoft Office, IBM is offering editors for creating documents, spreadsheets or presentations within a Web browser. Documents are delivered via a Web portal and stored in shared directories. Access control and document management tools allow people to share and edit documents with others. Until now, Workplace supported the formats from open-source product OpenOffice, from which the OpenDocument was derived. Workplace Managed Client software also can read, write and edit documents created with Microsoft Office."


Source: OSNews

"The Enomalism Virtualized Management Console is a powerful web-based systems administrator and management tool for XEN hypervisor. Servers with hundreds of multiple isolated Virtual Private Servers can be managed like a standalone server with Enomalism tools which include a VPS creation wizard and templates which facilitate VPS configuration, loading applications and centralized software management and deployment." It's completely open-source, they say, yet I can't find any info on what license they're using (but I suspect the GPL).



previous    Industry: Open Source    next


Source: Open Source Directory :: OSDir.com

People always say, why can't Linux have some of the same functionality as OSX ? Look at apple, see the path breaking innovations they bring out w.r.t usability. It is anybody's dream machine. And then, they go for the final kill - have you seen Expose at work on a Mac ? It's awesome!!


Source: Open Source Directory :: OSDir.com

JBoss has acquired two electronic-transaction technologies from Arjuna Technologies and Hewlett-Packard, in a move to bolster its open-source middleware.


Source: Open Source Directory :: OSDir.com

We ve brought you news of several projects involved in porting the popular open-source operating system Linux to different games consoles, but if you re already running Linux on your PC and want to play games, you may be finding it tricky.


Source: Open Source Directory :: OSDir.com

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games could switch to an open-source technology platform under proposals to be considered by the International Olympic Committee.



previous    Industry: Wireless    next


Source: 802.11b News

Three organizations have teamed up to create a standard database of wireless threats: Every industry now seems to have its own threats database, and there are good reasons to standardize on names, behavior, and vendor responses. CERT started over 17 years ago to help assess Internet vulnerabilities; with years of wireless attacks in the wild, the Wireless Vulnerabilities and Exploits (WVE) site is overdue.

Network Chemistry, a wireless network security firm, is one of three sponsors, along with training and certification firm CWNP, and the Center for Advanced Defense studies. The editorial board includes highly credible members. The site perhaps softlaunched earlier, but the formal press release went out today.

One of the points of the WVE, like similar codifications of threats, is that a discrete number assigned to a particular exploit or vulnerability means that it can be referred to across the literature without duplication. This makes it easier for vendors and open-source projects alike to check off specific known problems from their lists, and for certification processes that involve reducing risk to have a testbed as well.

For instance, if I want to talk about weak initialization vectors (IVs), a flaw that made the broken WEP encryption standard even more broken than it was, I'd write about WVE-2005-0021. One flaw in the organization of the site is that the URL should allow a WVE number to be used after the URL; instead, the numbers in the database are arbitrary and don't match the WVE numbers.



previous    Lang: Java    next


Source: java.net News

Blackdown has released version 1.4.2-03 of their Java implementation for Linux. It is mainly a bug fix release, but updates for Sun's Java version 1.4.2-10.



previous    OS    next


Source: CIO Today

Apple has quietly voiced its concerns about the growing threat it faces from Linux in the desktop market in its Form 10-K filing with the U.S. SEC late last week.



previous    OS: Linux    next


Source: Linux Today

Hackers don many disguises in order to sneak past IT security guards. The rootkit, one of the most effective disguises, not only masks the intruder, but covers his trail


Source: Linux Today

People always say, why can't Linux have some of the same functionality as OSX ?


Source: Linux Today

The built-in database tool in OpenOffice.org 2.0 is one of the most eagerly-awaited features in the new release


Source: Linux Today

Up until the leak of NVIDIA's 1.0-8168 display drivers, the possibilities of running NVIDIA SLI under Linux could have only been a figment of everyone's imagination


Source: Linux Today

Today's security advisories: gdk-pixbuf and helix-player (Debian GNU/Linux); perl (Fedora Core); php (Fedora Legacy); spamassassin, mailman, webmin (Mandriva Linux); and mysql-dfsg-4.1, w3c-libwww, ipsec-tools, perl, and inkscape (Ubuntu Linux).


Source: Linux Today

Have you replaced Windows with GNU/Linux on your computer(s)? That was the simple question I raised on a couple of listservs recently


Source: Linux Today

For generations, the Thanksgiving table has been the place where families gather to engage in a hallowed tradition--one-upmanship


Source: Linux Today

Has Microsoft repeated history in its fight against Linux? We wonder if the Redmond company has confused the proposed implementation of the Open Document Format as part of the fight against Linux .


Source: Linux Today

Humor: "We didn't hear about this danger from flying saucer nutcases but from the ultra-respectable British publication The Guardian "


Source: Linux Today

Texas Instruments (TI) has teamed up Linux with two new highly-integrated system-on-chip (SoC) processors


Source: Linux Today

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer managed to foil a plan by some Linux demonstrators to upset one of his speeches at the University of Massachusetts by showing up on time


Source: Linux Today

Several commercial games have been ported to Linux, including Quake 4, and there are many open-source games that ship with various distributions or can be downloaded


Source: Linux Today

Open-source technology is ready to take a major step forward into the competitive virtual machine space, a move that could help drive down costs for users


Source: Linux Today

Red Hat Inc and Fujitsu Ltd are expanding the relationship to bring applications running on Red Hat's Enterprise Linux and Fujitsu's PrimeQuest servers to the global market


Source: Linux Today

Verano is on a mission to safeguard industrial control networks like manufacturing plants, waterworks, or electrical grids


Source: Linux Weekly News


Source: Linux Weekly News


Source: Linux Today

Everybody know that you're the actual Debian GNU/Linux maintainer, one of most famous and used secure operating system nowaday. What's its philosophy ?


Source: Linux Today

When the Republic of Macedonia decided to deploy Linux in 468 schools and 182 computer labs nationwide, they chose GNOME on an Ubuntu distribution


Source: Linux Weekly News


Source: Linux Today

However unlike Windows users of the services, Mac and Linux subscribers will not be able to buy songs or transfer music to a portable player


Source: Linux Voodoo


Source: Linux Weekly News


Source: Linux Today

The Gentoo Linux project reported Friday that Gentoo GCC 3.4 has been marked stable on x86 machines


Source: Linux Today

There's a rc5 out there now, largely because I'm going to be out of email contact for the next week, and while I wish people were religiously testing all the nightly snapshots, the fact is, you guys don't


Source: Linux Today

One obstacle for Linux to overcome on the desktop is the lack of a consistent visual interface


Source: Linux Today

There is one user account on your Debian system that has the power to change anything: the root account. By power, I mean absolute power



previous    OS: Macintosh    next


  popularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularitypopularity

Source: TidBITS

Geoff Duncan (~370 words)RealNetworks today announced Rhapsody.com, a beta launch of a browser-based version of its Rhapsody streaming music subscription service for broadband users in the United States. Previously, the Rhapsody service was restricted to users running a Windows-only jukebox application; the new browser-based version opens popular features of the service to Mac and Linux users for the first time. Unlike Apple's iTunes Music Store, where users purchase and download individual tracks, Rhapsody users sign up for streaming audio service via the Internet. Subscribers paying for the Rhapsody Unlimited service can stream as much audio as they like for the $10 per month subscription charge; needless to say, users lose access to the music if they cease subscribing to the service, and there's no support for iPods, other portable music players, or any household digital music players for Mac and Linux users.


Source: MacMinute.com: Up-to-the-Minute Apple Mac News

Real's Rhapsody online music service is being expanded to offer a new Web-based version, supporting Macs and Linux-based devices, reports MarketWatch



previous    Security    next


Source: CNET News.com - Security

Cisco Systems issues response to vulnerabilities in open-source security software OpenSSL.



previous    Software: Linux    next


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

CleanSheets is a spreadsheet application that is
both extensible and platform-independent. It features a formula language that closely resembles that of Microsoft Excel, and extensions for aiding end-user programmers in developing correct spreadsheets. The application is written in Java, and relies on ANTLR for generating the formula compiler and the JFC/Swing JTable component for spreadsheet visualization.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release adds support for cell borders and
format, and introduces the powerful new reflective
DO function. Other new features are the ability to
add and remove spreadsheets in a workbook,
selection and auto-resizing of rows, and importing
of tab-separated strings from the clipboard.
Several improvements of existing features have
also been made, such as in the performance of the
spreadsheet table component, loading of language
elements, and appearance of dialogs.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

SoX is the Swiss Army knife of sound processing tools. It converts audio files among various standard audio file formats and can apply different effects and filters to the audio data.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release contains a new status line while
processing audio. It also contains an updated ALSA
driver and bugfixes to the AIFF, SMP, and WAV
handlers.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Gollem is a Web-based file manager that provides the ability to fully manage a hierarchical file system stored in a variety of backends such as a SQL database, as part of a real filesystem, or on an FTP server. It supports uploading and downloading of files, basic file operations, permissions support, and MIME recognition and viewing of files through the Horde MIME library. It is fully internationalized and translatable.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Default permissions for newly created files and
directories may now be set per backend. Support
for VFS Quota checking (if the VFS backend
supports it) was added. An interface was added to
facilitate admins in setting permissions on a
per-backend basis. Autocreation of home
directories was fixed when home is also the root
directory. Several bugfixes and improvements were
done.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

The Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy
game with a fantasy theme.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Many bugs were fixed in this version, including
one which could cause a buffer overflow. Other
changes include the addition of a few new
utilities, a few more graphics, and a couple more
sounds.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

IMMS (Intelligent Multimedia Management System) is
an intelligent playlist framework that
tracks your listening patterns and dynamically
adapts to your taste. It is incredibly unobtrusive
and easy to use as it requires no direct user
interaction. Plugins are currently available for XMMS and BMP.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release fixes an important bug affecting the
ratings of new songs. All users of 2.99.x and 3.0
are encouraged to upgrade.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Java for C++ is a tool to generate C++ wrapper classes for existing Java classes. This tool reads a list of Java class names and creates source code for C++ classes to wrap them. The implementation of the wrapper classes uses JNI (Java Native Interface) to call the "real" Java classes. The C++ API to use these wrapper classes is very close to the API of the original Java classes. So developers of C++ software can use Java classes as if they have been implemented in C++.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
The generated code now uses namespaces (java::lang::Integer) instead of ugly long class names (java_lang_Integer). Ant build files have been added for easier compilation.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Spe is a Python IDE with auto-indentation, auto completion, call tips, syntax coloring, syntax highlighting, UML, a class explorer, source index, an auto todo list, sticky notes, integrated pycrust shell, a Python file browser, a recent file browser, drag and drop, and context help. It also includes Blender support a 3D object browser and the ability to run interactively inside Blender. It includes the wxGlade GUI designer, the PyChecker source code doctor, and Kiki regular expression console.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release fixes the Windows installer and a lot of bugs, especially for the Mac (such as the regular expression console).


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

uni2ascii and ascii2uni convert between UTF-8
Unicode and more than a dozen 7-bit ASCII
equivalents including: hexadecimal and decimal
HTML numeric character references, \u-escapes,
standard hexadecimal, raw hexadecimal, and RFC2396
URI format. Such ASCII equivalents are encountered
in a variety of circumstances, such as when
Unicode text is included in program source, when
entering text into Web programs that can handle
the Unicode character set but are not 8-bit safe,
and when debugging.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Support was added for the format X'xxxx', e.g. X'00E9' for e with acute accent.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

CubeTest is aimed at primary school students. With it,
users can train their spatial insight by answering
questions about cubes.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Ported to Qt 4. Support for two new languages: Italian and Portuguese. Autotools files have been cleaned up.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

IP-Array is a Linux iptables firewall script written in bash. It allows the creation of precise, stateful rules, while remaining easy to configure. IP-Array supports VPN, traffic shaping (creation of custom HTB and SFQ qdiscs, classes, and filters), multiple external interfaces, multiple LANs, multiple DMZs, NAT, logging, MAC address matching, packet marking, syslog logging, and various sysctl settings. It also includes some presets and autoconfig options for common needs like DNS, FTP, SMTP.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Bugfixes and minor feature improvements were made.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

SLFFEA stands for San Le's Free Finite Element Analysis. It is a package of scientific software and graphical user interfaces for use in finite element analysis.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release adds support for Reisner-Midlin (shear deformable) Beams and hinge elements. It adds support for four nodes.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Stunnix Perl Web Server is an advanced Web server
developed for writing browser-based applications
and database-driven catalogues or presentations
that reside on CDROM or DVD, internally
implemented as Perl-driven or PHP-driven Web sites
that store data in a database also located on
CDROM. It produces a single CD that works on
Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux/x86, without
requiring any additional software on the user's
computer. All an author needs to do to build a
cross-platform browser-based application or CDROM
is to copy scripts to their proper directories.
HTML::Mason and mod_perl-like execution modes are
supported for Perl-driven Web sites.

License: Other/Proprietary License with Free Trial

Changes:
Now database files of Web sites residing on read-only media can be copied from CD-ROM/DVD/flash to a non-temporary directory via a newly-added configuration option. The FastCGI interface of the PHP interpreter is used on Linux and Mac OS X if present, which allows PHP scripts to take 2 times less time to execute. The GD extension for PHP is supported on all platforms. Access control is ignored by MySQL to simplify porting sites for running from CD-ROMs. HTA files are supported out of the box. The XCGI module has been improved to make running XCGI scripts in CGI mode easier.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

HBCI4Java is a Java library for the HBCI home
banking interface. It supports almost all aspect
of the HBCI versions 2.01, 2.1, 2.2, HBCI+ and
FinTS-3.0 (with PIN/TAN support). Its API is very
application-oriented, so no knowledge about HBCI
is required. The HBCI client package can be used
to develop applications using HBCI features. The
HBCI server package can be used to develop your
own HBCI servers. This may be useful for credit
institutes or software developers who want to
setup their own HBCI test server.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
First version of the wrapper library. The C++ classes will be generated using Java4CPP. There is a (very small) sample application included demonstrating the usage of the newly created C++ classes.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Jeti is a Java Jabber client that supports most chat
features such as file transfer, group chat,
emoticons, and formatted messages. It can be used
as an application or as a Web applet.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
The applet has been updated to use jeti 0.7.2. It now has HTTPS proxy support and anonymous login (if the server supports it; no public server has it enabled). There is also a new groupchat only Jeti, which is much smaller then the normal Jeti applet.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

The aim of Ant SVK Task is to create fully
functional support for the SVK SCM tool within Ant
build files.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Source/bin distribution in different formats (zip,tar.gz,jar) has been added, and the build process has been improved.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Early Macintosh Image LoadEr (EMILE) makes it
possible to boot linux-m68k from a floppy on a
Macintosh such as a Mac II. It can be used to create
rescue disks or remove the MacOS partition (required
by the legacy penguin booter) from your hard drive.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release uses zlib-1.2.3, can decode ELF format, and can read files from CD-ROM.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Jajuk is an MP3/OGG/WAV jukebox for all platforms. The main goal is to provide a fully-featured application to advanced users with large or scattered music collections. It currently supports MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Wave, AU, AIFF, and Speex audio formats.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
14 bugs have been fixed. Performance has been improved.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

CMus is a small and fast text mode music player.
Supported file formats include FLAC, Ogg, MP3 (via
libmad), wav, and all module formats supported by libmodplug. Included output plugins are ALSA, ARTS, and OSS.

It can be controlled through a UNIX socket. Background playlist loading and a metadata database make loading files very fast. Playqueue, directory browser and integrated help. Three playlist views are available: artist/album/track, shuffle list, and flat list. Three play modes: all, artist, album. UTF-8 support.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This version adds a Sun output plugin and support for NetBSD and OpenBSD. Wide character support (libncursesw) is now optional; libncurses can be used instead. Two new built-in filters, tracknumber and discnumber, were added. This version can handle invalid UTF-8 strings safely. Various bugfixes and memory allocation optimizations were made.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

The Kent Retargettable Occam Compiler is a
multi-platform Occam 2.1 compiler that is
designed to allow the Occam programming
language to be used on non-Transputer
platforms.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
DXRaster has been replaced with SDLRaster. Improvements to hardware floating-point operations. Mobile process updates, including CIF support, the addition of on-the-fly loading and unloading of libraries, the addition of serialize and deserialize, and numerous bugfixes. The SUSPEND implementation has been updated. Fixes to variable constructors and very small static constructors. Minor bugfixes in PPC and SPARC support.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

prbeditor is an editor for Java property resource bundle files. The application's intent is to help in the localization (l10n) of those programs that have been internationalized with Java's standard i18n mechanism. In contrast to other similar tools, it shows the keys and values of several languages at the same time in a spreadsheet, giving a global view of the resource files. The tool relies on the application of regular expresions to organize the keys and filter the visibility of the files.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release adds a word Auto-Complete feature. It has the ability to disable the auto-complete and translator engines. The replace action has been fixed.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

D is a high-level language derived from C and C++ but is
not backwards-compatible with either. GDC is a frontend for
D written for GCC.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Bugfixes for mixed complex/float operations on GCC 4.0, HTML line numbers, foreach/nested functions in templates, and recursive calls to nested functions. Now uses the correct default initializer when allocating arrays of typedef'd types. Updated to DMD 0.140.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

My Knoppix - Digital Home Edition is meant to be a
smart and centralized OS that can be implemented
in a home environment. It can be connected to a TV
or other large screen to record and play DVD
movies and surf the Internet. It also implements
video sharing with the NX technology, and includes
the videolan program for broadcasting video or
music throughout the network. Diskless client
computers can connect with the server as it
performs other tasks. My Knoppix - Digital Home
Edition is a bootable CD derived from Knoppix 3.9.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release has been remastered from Knoppix 4.0.2. Most programs are updated to the latest version. Krita, Kivio, and kmplayer have been added. udev/hal has been added for better support for USB storage. Multimedia support for browsers has been enhanced. Booting time is faster.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Little Wizard is a development environment for
children. Little Wizard can be programmed without
using keyboard, just by using drag and drop. It
works under Linux and Windows 2000/XP (using GTK).
Even children in primary school can understand how
it works.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Project file version control has been fixed. This release will not allow you to drag dummy pieces. A warning in the save as dialog has been fixed.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

EpiGrass is a simulator of epidemics over networks. It is a scientific
tool created for simulations and scenario analysis in network
epidemiology.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Enables the use of custom models written by the user The visualization module has been improved. Mouse-over shows city names. alt-Mouse-over shows time series. Choice of variable in the animation module. Models with arbitrary numbers of variables and parameters now work. Now seed can be put in any variable. Improved display with edge animation. An 'all' keyword for vaccination. An option to randomize seed during replicate run. This release exports the spread tree in GML format. Randomization of seeding sites has been added.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

mechanoid is a programmatic browser written in
Python. It is a general solution for handling HTML
form sequences. It comes with a set of site
classes for accessing the primary pages of
prominent sites. mechanoid is a fork of John J.
Lee's mechanize.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Mechanoid is being developed as the back-end for unusual browsers such as voice-text browsers for the handicapped and meta-page browsers for Web programmers. Because it is intended for use as a browser and not a Web bot, the handling of robots.txt files has been removed. You should no longer use it as a bot.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Max (Macintosh Audio for OS X) is an application
for ripping and encoding MP3 audio files. It aims
to have a simple, intuitive interface. Features:
high-quality MP3 encoding using the LAME encoding
engine, integration with FreeDB to automatically
acquire artist and track names using libcddb, and
output tagged with ID3v2.4 tags using TagLib.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
The most obvious new feature is the ability to encode multiple audio formats: MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis. The homegrown ripper is gone, replaced with a custom port of cdparanoia to provide error correction. The user interface has been substantially improved, and the internals were rewritten to use the NSDocument architecture. A functional batch mode now exists, and the online help has been improved.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

BKchem is a chemical drawing program written in
Python.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release focuses mainly on bugfixes and introduces support for
several new common groups, such as TMS, MOP, etc.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

C++ Server Pages is a partial Java server pages
and servlet implementation in C++. It is written
as Apache 2.0 modules, with the focus on performance.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
A number of build errors were fixed. This release
was tested on Red Hat and Fedora on the
SourceForge compile farm.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

abcm2ps is a package that converts music tunes from ABC format to PostScript. Based on abc2ps version 1.2.5, it was developed mainly to print baroque organ scores that have independant voices played on one or more keyboards, and a pedal-board. It introduces many extensions to the ABC language that make it suitable for classical music.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Minor bugs affecting page layout were fixed.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

SmileTAG is a shoutbox written in PHP. It has a
powerful template system; it's easy-to-modify
templates using only simple tags, and no
programming skill is needed. Smart auto-refresh
automatically refreshes whenever a new message is
posted. No database is needed. It includes
profanity filters, flood guard, IP address/nick
banning, customizable smilies, time zone control,
multi-language support, email/URL recognition, a
custom CSS file, and a lot more.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This is a WordPress Plugin version of the SmileTAG
shoutbox.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

IMDbPY aims to provide an easy way to access the IMDb's
database using a Python package. It is theoretically
independent from the data source (since IMDb provides two
or three different interfaces to their database). It is mainly
intended for programmers and developers, but some
example scripts are included.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This is mainly a bugfix release. Some bugs in
mobile, SQL, and HTTP data access systems were
solved.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

mwcollect is an easy solution to collect worm-like
malware in a non-native environment like FreeBSD
or Linux. The first versions were used to collect
binaries for botnet monitoring, and bots are still
what it is mostly collecting. Some people consider
it a next generation honeypot; however, that
comparison often leads to the misunderstanding
that computers running mwcollect can actually be
infected with the malware, which is not the case.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release fixes some minor bugs, adds two
shellcode parsers and a new parsing engine for FTP
instruction files, and, most importantly,
introduces approved Prelude IDS compatibility to
mwcollect.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

sims (sims is more than sig2dot) parses the output
of "gpg --list-sigs" and produces graphs of all
the signature relationships in different output
formats. It aims to be a replacement for sig2dot
which provides many new features. Additionally,
parsing of the input is much improved.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
It is now possible to produce an HTML statistics
file with the number of signatures per key, thus
providing a complete superset of the sig2dot
functionality.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

lftp is a sophisticated command line based file transfer program. Supported protocols include FTP, HTTP, SFTP, and FISH. It has a multithreaded design allowing you to issue and execute multiple commands simultaneously or in the background. It also features mirroring capabilities and will reconnect and continue transfers in the event of a disconnection. Also, if you quit the program while transfers are still in progress, it will switch to nohup mode and finish the transfers in the background. Additional protocols supported: FTP over HTTP proxy, HTTPS and FTP over SSL. There are lots of tunable parameters, including rate limitation, number of connections limitation and more.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
mirror --older-than, --size-range, and
--max-errors options were added. Protected
transfers are allowed after the CCC FTP command.
Experimental support was added for SFTP v5 and v6.
The configure option --with-pager was added. File
uploading via protected FTP with OpenSSL was
fixed. Compilation on Cygwin and with the Sun
compiler was fixed.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Stickloader is an easy solution for copying music
files from your hard disk to your USB stick and
re-encoding them at a lower bitrate for more
efficient usage of your MP3 player disk space. MP3
files and whole directories can be easily dragged
on the Stickloader window (which always stays on
top) and they are automatically re-encoded using
LAME and copied to your USB stick by using a
temporary directory to avoid blocking the encoding
process.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
A Linux binary package is now provided. Windows
and Linux packages should run "out-of-the-box".
WAV and MP3 files are accepted. Processes can be
cancelled. The LAME path does not have to be
provided if lame is in the search path.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

mGSTEP is an implementation of the core elements in NeXT's (now Apple) OPENSTEP/Cocoa Objective C class libraries. The principal design goal is the development of a modular application development framework suitable for use in embedded devices and server appliances running Linux, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD. The GUI (AppKit) portion is X11-based.

License: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

Changes:
Several flaws in the field editor mechanism were
resolved. A fix was made to the behavior of tool
tips when clicked. A number of bugs related to the
use of the open/save panels were fixed. A few of
the cluster based classes were tuned to eliminate
redundant method implementations. NSPropertyList
was updated from the latest myStep source tree.
Changes to NSWorkspace eliminate a nuisance bug in
the use of this class without a pre-configured
defaults database. A package of optional icons was
added to the Web site's Projects page.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

PHP Project is an easy-to-use Web-based project
management system. It features multiple user
support, and is easy to customize for your needs.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Some minor code cleanup was done within the CSS
file.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

chan_misdn is a channel driver for the open source
PBX Asterisk for using ISDN BRI/PRI devices that
are supported by mISDN. It is the new ISDN Layer
for Linux.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Release management was changed. This is the first
stable version.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

GOsa is a PHP-based administration tool for role-based managing of accounts and systems in LDAP databases. Standard configurations can manage generic, POSIX/shadow, postfix/cyrus/sieve, pureftpd, fax, and samba 2/3 accounts in LDAP. It has plugins for DNS (BIND), DHCP (ISC dhcpd), and system/terminal management. The look and feel can be easily adapted to users' needs.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
The layout has been updated to work cleanly with
IE6+, Firefox 1.0.4+, and khtml 3.4+. Support for
managing FAI (Fully Automated Installation) has
been added. Management features for mailqueues
have been added. A help browser has been added,
including initial French help text. The speed has
been improved by switching to directory-style
dialogs and performing sub-searches.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

phc is a compiler for PHP that will translate PHP
code directly into Linux assembly code. It can be
used as a (C++) framework for developing
refactoring tools, aspect weavers, script
obfuscators, and any other tools that operate on
PHP scripts.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Windows-style line breaks are handled properly.
The DOT unparser (which generates the syntax tree)
now deals with NULL vectors (e.g., abstract
methods). The --dump-tokens option has been fixed.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Mapnik is an toolkit for developing GIS
applications. At the core is a C++ shared library
providing algorithms/patterns for spatial data
access and visualization. Essentially a collection
of geographic objects (map, layer, datasource,
feature, and geometry), the library doesn't rely
on "windowing systems" and can be deployed in any
server environment. It is intended to play fair in
a multi-threaded environment and is aimed
primarily, but not exclusively, at Web-based
development. High-level Python bindings
(boost.python) facilitate rapid application
development, targeting zope3, django, etc.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This is mainly a bugfix release. Support for
agg-2.4 was added.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

collectd is a small daemon which collects system
information every 10 seconds and writes the
results in an RRD-file. The statistics gathered
include: CPU and memory usage, network interface
traffic, and system temperatures (using
lm-sensors). In network mode, clients multicast
their values over the network to servers which
write the RRD-files.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Fixes for the daemon initialization have been
added. The dependency on librrd has been relaxed
so client-only binaries can be built. A module to
monitor the current CPU frequency has been added.



previous    Software: OpenSource    next


Source: SourceForge New Releases

SystemDotNet on Linux


Source: NewsForge

End user licence agreements (EULA) are nobody's favorite reading. Users of free and open source software (FOSS), who are accustomed to licences that give no warranty and admit no liability, may be even less inclined to read EULAs than most computer users. Perhaps, though, we should start. Over the last few years, commercial GNU/Linux distributions have been wrestling with the question of whether users should be indemnified in the event that a third party patent is upheld -- and, in some cases, their answers are starting to appear in their EULAs. However, whether these varying answers offer better protection than the GNU General Public License remains unproven.



previous    Web: General    next


Source: Hack the Planet

OpenVZ is a virtualization layer for Linux similar to Linux-VServer or Solaris Zones that runs multiple partitions on a single kernel.


Source: Hack the Planet

Dan Kegel posted notes from the OSDL Linux on the Desktop Architect meeting


Source: Web Developer News

The next generation of TI's consumer electronics silicon is powered by Linux.



previous    Weblogs    next


Source: O'Reilly Network Weblogs

Why outfit a classroom with 42 PCs when you can get by with 6?


Source: The Doc Searls Weblog

The World Live Web is my column in the December issue of Linux Journal. It's a good corollary to both Saving the Net (which is still causing quite a stir, even though it was published several weeks ago) and the Syndicate conference next week (promo'd below). It begins,There's a split in the Web. It's been there from the beginning, like an elm grown from a seed that carried the promise of a trunk that forks twenty feet up toward the sky.The main trunk is the static Web. We understand and describe the static Web in terms of real estate. It has "sites" with "addresses" and "locations" in "domains" we "develop" with the help of "architects", "designers" and "builders". Like homes and office buildings, our sites have "visitors" unless, of course, they are "under construction".One layer down, we describe the Net in terms of shipping. "Transport" protocols govern the "routing" of "packets" between end points where unpacked data resides in "storage". Back when we still spoke of the Net as an "information highway", we used "information" to label the goods we stored on our hard drives and Web sites. Today "information" has become passé. Instead we call it "content".Publishers, broadcasters and educators are now all in the business of "delivering content". Many Web sites are now organized by "content management systems".The word content connotes substance. It's a material that can be made, shaped, bought, sold, shipped, stored and combined with other material. "Content" is less human than "information" and less technical than "data", and more handy than either. Like "solution" or the blank tiles in Scrabble, you can use it anywhere, though it adds no other value.I've often written about the problems that arise when we reduce human expression to cargo, but that's not where I'm going this time.Where I go is toward building an understanding of the Live Web as something very different than the static Web we've known for a decade. That difference is why, for example, Google separates its main (static Web) search and its blog (live Web) search. So one effect of the search engines' success has been to concretize our understanding of the Web as a static kind of place, not unlike a public library. The fact that the static Web's library lacks anything resembling a card catalog doesn't matter a bit. The search engines are virtual librarians who take your order and retrieve documents from the stacks in less time than it takes your browser to load the next page.In the midst of that library, however, there are forms of activity that are too new, too volatile, too unpredictable for conventional Web search to understand fully. These compose the live Web that's now branching off the static one.The live Web is defined by standards and practices that were nowhere in sight when Tim Berners-Lee was thinking up the Web, when the "browser war" broke out between Netscape and Microsoft, or even when Google began its march toward Web search domination. The standards include XML, RSS, OPML and a growing pile of others, most of which are coming from small and independent developers, rather than from big companies. The practices are blogging and syndication. Lately podcasting (with OPML-organized directories) has come into the mix as well.These standards and practices are about time and people, rather than about sites and content. Of course blogs still look like sites and content to the static Web search engines, but to see blogs in static terms is to miss something fundamentally different about them: they are alive. Their live nature, and their humanity, defines the live Web.It is essential that we understand the live Web on its own terms, rather than those leveraged from the static Web.The syndication tie-in:Blogging predated syndication, but it was syndication that began to give form to the live Web. Syndication provided a way for people, and the tools they use, to pay attention (through subscription) to feeds from syndicated sources. At first these sources were blogs and publications, but later they came to include searches for topics of conversation, including the names of authors, URLs and permalinks for particular blog posts or news stories. Many of those sources were not the blogs themselves, but search engines reporting the results of keyword and URL searches.Kudos go to Dave for bringing syndication to life, giving everybody with a blog a hyper'd form of the power only newspapers and magazines enjoyed for a century or more. As a fresh grace on humanity, I can't think of anything better.


Source: The Doc Searls Weblog

What kind of fiber *in* the home? is the question I ask over at IT Garage. It's a follow-up to other questions raised in Building an Open Source Home, over at Linux Journal.If you have any answers, feel free to post them.



Updated: Wed Jun 28 00:11:12 2006


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