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NewsVac: News from around the Web

• Free San Francisco Wi-Fi project dies 2 years, 2 months ago
  
  EarthLink has backed out of a deal to build San Francisco's free citywide Wi-Fi service.
• Power loss at Samsung plant halts production 2 years, 3 months ago
  
  For now, no one is panicking, but there could be a slight pinch in the availability of DRAM and flash memory.
• Docs want more info on video game addiction 2 years, 5 months ago
  
  The American Medical Association called for more research into the public health risks of video and Internet games on Wednesday but stopped short of declaring them addictive.

  The AMA, which recommended a review of the current video game rating system, also said it would leave it up to the American Psychiatric Association and other experts to decide whether video game addiction should be designated a mental illness.

• Broadcast Treaty wounded and dying 2 years, 5 months ago
  
  It's been four or five years since Electronic Frontier Foundation joined the fight against the United Nations' "broadcast treaty," and this week, just as things were looking darkest, we scored our most definitive victory,
• Ronin: Logged Off - Celebrating Jim Farnsworth 2 years, 6 months ago
  
  D.C. Parris writes "Jim Farnsworth, known to many as "jimf" or "Ronin", logged off the IRC channel, #life, Sunday morning in a hospital in Kenosha, Wisconsin. As an active member of the LXer community, we'd like to help our readers celebrate Jim's impact on all of us."
• Real world Rails: Caching in Rails 2 years, 6 months ago
  
  Anonymous Reader writes "For some, Rails is hyper productive and for others Ruby is a toy. One camp says its well marketed and the other camp tells us Ruby is over hyped. Like many newer technologies, Rails also has a reputation as unproven with limited scalability. Unlike the C and Java languages, Ruby is interpreted, with all of the inherent performance handicaps.
• Open Technology within DoD, Intel Systems 2 years, 7 months ago
  
  jmw writes "Washington, DC – April 6, 2007 – Ranking members from the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence Community gathered with computer and software industry representatives in March to address Open Technology Development within government IT systems.
  
  The two-day “Open Technology: Realizing the Vision” conference was hosted by the Association for Enterprise Integration(AFEI) and supported by industry and advocacy groups including the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).
  
  Government keynote speakers included Brigadier General Nickolas G. Justice, U.S. Army (USA); Chuck Riechers, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force (USAF); and Michele Weslander, Office of National Intelligence (ONI). Additional government speakers included representatives from the Department of the Navy's Office of the Chief Information Officer (DONCIO); U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).
  
  Day one of the conference focused on government acquisition, policy and program implementation issues relating to DoD's proposed Open Technology Development roadmap.
  
  “Our goal is to increase technical efficiency and reduce software lifecycle costs within DoD,” said Chuck Riechers, Principal Deputy, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition. “The Open Technology Development roadmap sets out a strategic vision that encourages the use of open standards, open data interfaces and best-of-breed open source software solutions when and where appropriate.
  
  “We are not mandating that it's either “open” or “proprietary” solutions,” he continued “We want to pay for unique intellectual property when they are best of breed, but not succumb to code and vendor-specific lock-in situations. Acquisition of proprietary solutions needs to be a conscience choice, not an assumption. The default should be “open technology development,” where standards and interfaces are open and accessible and best of breed software is utilized, all coupled with the Air Force exercising data rights. Further, we need to move toward an increased competitive, collaborative and interoperable environment across the Services and industry for technology development. This strategy will help to minimize redundant development efforts and enable more agile development and deployment of systems.”
  
  Brigadier General Nick Justice, the Deputy Program Officer for the Army's Program Executive Office, Command, Control and Communications Tactical (PEO C3T) said that open source software currently plays a critical role in his command's activities.
  
  “Our job is to provide accurate and timely information to the soldier in the field so they can perform their mission,” said General Justice. “Open source software is part of the integrated network fabric which connects and enables our command and control system to work effectively, as people's lives depend on it.
  
  “When we rolled into Baghdad, we did it using open source,” General Justice continued. “It may come as a surprise to many of you, but the U.S. Army is “the” single largest install base for Red Hat Linux. I'm their largest customer.”
  
  Day two of the conference focused on the use of open technologies within government and corporate geospatial solutions.
  
  Michele Weslander, Principal Deputy Associate Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and Deputy Chief Information Officer in the Office of the DNI said the Open Technology Development model was a fundamental component in the realm of geospatial information gathering, analysis and dissemination.
  
  “Speed, efficiency and flexibility are essential in the business of Intelligence gathering,“ Weslander said. “One of the key advantages of using open technologies within geospatial programs is that it promotes interoperability which broadens the resource base which we have to draw from regarding both informational data and the tools and service providers which collect and process the vast amounts of information involved in satellite mapping and information sharing.”
  
  Additional presentations at the conference were made by representatives from Google, Unisys, Hewlett Packard, EnterpriseDB, Red Hat, Black Duck Software, Autodesk, Inc., Radiant Blue Technologies and Refractions Research.
  
  Additional information on this and future conferences, including copies of presentations, are available at: http://www.afei.org/brochure/7a03/hidden.cfm
  
  About the Open Source Software Institute
  The Open Source Software Institute is a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote the development and implementation of open source software solutions within U.S. Federal, state and municipal government agencies and academic entities. For additional information, please see: http://oss-institute.org .
  
  About the Open Source Geospatial Foundation
  The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or OSGeo, is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation provides financial, organizational and legal support to the broader open source geospatial community. It also serves as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding and other resources, secure in the knowledge that their contributions will be maintained for public benefit. OSGeo also serves as an outreach and advocacy organization for the open source geospatial community, and provides a common forum and shared infrastructure for improving cross-project collaboration. For additional information, please see: http://www.osgeo.org/.
  
  About the Association for Enterprise Integration
  The Association for Enterprise Integration is the leading industry group providing a framework for collaboration between government and industry. The DoD CIO has turned to AFEI to be its conduit for policy and strategy input from industry through jointly chartered working groups. For additional information, please see: http://www.afei.org ."
• Notable XML happenings in 2006 2 years, 10 months ago
  
  Anonymous Reader writes "2006 was a productive year for XML. The most sound and fury focused around browsers, with major new releases of every major browser. The importance of open, documented, standard file formats has suddenly become a critical issue to governments. The most effective XML technologies are growing from the grassroots because developers are looking at them and deciding they work. Join Elliotte Rusty Harold for a look back at the most significant XML news from 2006."
• Inside Oracle's bombshell plan to support Red Hat 2 years, 12 months ago
  
  Mark Brunelli writes "Oracle's decision to get into the open source Linux business shouldn't come as a major surprise to Red Hat, according to one IT industry expert."
• Open Source Business 2 years, 12 months ago
  
  Michael Höppner writes "First edition of Open Source Business Forum attracts more than 100 attendees
  Business Potential of Open Source: Start-up companies, Investors and Experts are discussing Key Questions
  
  Potsdam, November 29, 2006 – Open Source is known as one of the most promising development models for new IT technologies, particularly in the software area. However, its potential of commercial exploitation still remains to be defined. In order to discuss this topic in Germany and to provide an opportunity to emerging Open Source companies for presenting themselves to experts and investors, the first Open Source Business Forum took place on November 7, 2006, at Hasso Plattner Institut in Potsdam. Eran Davidson, President and CEO of Hasso Plattner Ventures (HPV), framed the key questions concerning the commercial future of the free development model. They built the foundation for discussions of more than 100 forum participants, including Dr. Heinrich Arnold, Vice President Innovation Development of Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, and Herbert Kircher, Managing Director of IBM Deutschland Entwicklung GmbH. Technological, financial and legal aspects of Open Source were addressed.
• Core functions of Atom illustrated by example 3 years, 1 month ago
  
  Anonymous Reader writes "The Atom Publishing Protocol is an important new standard for content publishing and management. It has been deployed to millions of Web sites and is supported by every major syndication platform on the market. In this article, explore a high-level overview of the protocol and its basic operation and capabilities. It illustrates, through example, all of its core functions."
• UNIX Error Reporting in the Standard C Library 3 years, 2 months ago
  
  Anonymous Reader writes "Proper error detection and recovery is often ignored by UNIX developers. The lack of exceptions from the C language and the rudimentary error mechanisms from the standard C library certainly contribute to this. This article familiarizes you with the UNIX standard error reporting mechanism, the errno global variable. You'll also learn about a couple of associated global variables ( sys_nerr and sys_errlist). Like it, then digg it."
• Welsh schools adopt open source email 3 years, 2 months ago
  
  Major educational deal shows that open source is taking off in the regional public sector, say open source consultants. A Welsh county council has brokered a deal to provide open source email to up to 40,000 pupils and teachers.
• Take a closer look at the most secure Unix OS Open 3 years, 3 months ago
  
  Anonymous Reader writes "OpenBSD strives to be the most secure UNIX derivation. Design principles, such as code auditing, extensive use of encryption, and careful configuration choices, combine to ensure OpenBSD's secure by default philosophy holds true. This article gives you a close look at the operating system so secure that it was once banned for use in a DEF CON competition, where crackers go after each other's systems."
• Retool your Linux skills for commercial UNIX 3 years, 3 months ago
  
  Anonymous Reader writes "Examine how to best migrate your Linux skills to take advantage of AIX and Solaris. Linux is all the rage, but what if you have experience in Linux and need to apply it to a commercial UNIX environment? UNIX and Linux are similar, and many of the same principles exist; there is a shell, root is still all powerful, and many of the tools and applications are the same. This tutorial will show you how to cope and understand the nuances and differences."
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