05.20.08

Links 20/05/2008: More GNU/Linux Servers, Handhelds, Points of Sale

Posted in News Roundup at 1:27 am by Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Open source in Japan: Q&A with the President of Plat’Home
Android Developer Challenge: Early Apps Lookin’ Sharp

Google has just wrapped up the Android Developer Challenge that it announced back in November. Android, of course, is Google’s Linux-based mobile platform, slated to show up in a wave of new mobile phones later this year.
JP Morgan Tech Show: Palm Sees Software Lifting its Fortunes

Well, on the way to that Linux software, Palm hopes to return to increasing sales and return to profitability a couple of ways, said Brown: one, the Centro, is available at 10 carriers now and will be spreading to more carriers globally.
Die-shrunk Cell processor, blade run Linux

Big Blue touts the openness of Linux as helping data center managers improve power efficiency. The AS22 ships with a newly upgraded Software Development Kit (SDK) for Multicore Acceleration v3 based on Red Hat’s forthcoming Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.2.
Red Hat Summit Invades Boston
The Demographics of i Sales and Shipments

While Linux is nowhere near as popular at i shops, spending came to $200 million, with 36 percent of midrange shops having Linux somewhere in their data centers and 35 percent of large enterprises having Linux. HP has the biggest piece of the Linux pie within the IBM OS/400-i5/OS-i installed base–a bit embarrassing considering that the iSeries got native support for Linux eight years ago–followed up by IBM’s own 19 percent spending share, Dell’s 14 percent share, and Sun Microsystems’ 5 percent share.
POS systems run uClinux
Announcing Exherbo!
2.6.26-rc3, “Another Week, Another -rc Release”
Ubuntu - 8.04 (Review)
Hands on: The changing face of Fedora

Ubuntu may be the most popular desktop distribution, but Fedora support is strong

F/OSS

How open is your open source vendor?

If vendors are not proactive about writing and publishing declarative statements about their open source involvement, they may find that community users start judging them on the community’s terms. From Milking the GNU comes the suggestion that a new independent organization could be formed to judge vendors that claim to be open source on a number of criteria, such as patent policy, business model and development model.
DimDim Enhances Open Source Version
Ingres OpenROAD Now Open Source
Ingres Steps Up Open Source Contributions
Worry About Integration, Not Installation
OpenApp fixes sights on Open Community
MySQL: the Australian connection

Security and Crime

Mass SQL Injection Attack Targets Chinese Web Sites

Mass SQL injection attacks have increasingly become a security threat. In January, tens of thousands of PCs were infected by an automated SQL injection attack. That attack exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft’s SQL Server.
38 in US, Romania Charged in Phishing Schemes
US SEC charges eight ex-AOL Time Warner execs

The scheme involved fraudulent transactions in which AOL Time Warner effectively funded its own advertising revenue by giving purchasers the money to buy online advertising that they did not want or need, the SEC said.
McAfee Anti-fraud Researcher Charged With Fraud

Brett Oliphant, whose title had been vice president of security services before the Napa, California, company was acquired by McAfee in January, is facing 11 counts of securities fraud in transactions that allegedly brought in more than US$1.215 million.

Microsoft

Prime minister Brown backs Google

In a speech that read like a tacit disapproval of convicted monopolist Microsoft, Brown banged on before an audience of business bigwigs about the stupidity of protectionism.
Google mulls Microsoft response

Speaking at the Google Zeitgeist conference in Hertfordshire, hosted by the internet company’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, chief executive, said: “After this press conference the three of us will meet and decide what our response is.”
Users Report More Trouble With Windows XP SP3
Microsoft: Don’t Misunderstand UAC, Other Vista Features

In its continued attempt to convince business customers to adopt Vista, Microsoft has outlined and tried to explain some of what it calls the OS’s most “misunderstood” features in a document posted to — then mysteriously removed from — its Web site this week.