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NewsVac: News from around the Web

• Why open source developers can be more productive, and other tales from a Google open house 2 hours, 50 minutes ago
  
  Yesterday Google celebrated the opening of a larger Cambridge, Massachusetts office, which takes up a substantial part of a building right next to the Kendall/MIT subway stop in the higher-than-high tech area of East Cambridge. I got a look at their new Friend Connect service (covered in a related Radar blog) and heard some fascinating comments that the staff kindly let me reproduce here.
• Frequent open source miles 4 hours, 50 minutes ago
  
  Matt Asay’s piece on “open source free- riders” got my goat this morning because we’re on opposite sides of the market.
• Can the Feds enforce Net neutrality? Maybe not 6 hours, 50 minutes ago
  
  Federal regulators may be probing Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent filesharing traffic, but can they actually take action, if they choose, against the company or any other broadband provider on Net neutrality grounds?
• Linux and the tax office: never the twain shall meet 8 hours, 50 minutes ago
  
  Why would a government body offer trial software for small and other businesses which use the GNU/Linux operating system, take it offline when the interest in it grows and keep quiet about it thereafter?
• Microsoft, OLPC officially team up 10 hours, 50 minutes ago
  
  So, I guess this makes it Two Operating Systems Per Child. The One Laptop Per Child project and Microsoft announced Thursday that indeed the XO laptop will be available in both Linux and Windows varieties. The companies plan to sell a Windows-powered XO in five or six countries starting next month, with a broader release in August or September.
• Google, IBM, Red Hat, Sun and the Digistan Connection 12 hours, 50 minutes ago
  
  Another anti-Microsoft (MSFT) front group has emerged in favor of “free and open standards,” hyping what it calls the Hague Declaration and making some absurd connection to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The propagandists, partially funded by publicly traded companies, have a little trouble describing what that term “free and open standards” means (or even using it consistently), but the group has no trouble indicating its political stripes. Unbelievably it calls itself Digistan, apparently to identify with the fascist terrorists based in countries and regions using the Farsi-based suffix “stan.”
• End of Intel, AMD duopoly near? Via readies Isaiah chip 14 hours, 50 minutes ago
  
  Is the end of the Intel-AMD duopoly nigh? Via Technologies is hoping this may be the case when it announces the "Isaiah" processor later this month.
• Strong passwords no panacea as SSH brute-force attacks rise 16 hours, 50 minutes ago
  
  Thanks to the end-of-term for many colleges and some K12 schools, brute-force attacks against SSH servers surged sharply this past weekend, according to the SANS Internet Storm Center. The sudden jump in SSH attacks merits a re-examination of how such servers should be properly secured. Jim Owens and Jeanna Matthews of the Department of Computer Science at Clarkson University have published a paper on the methods that such attacks frequently employ and on the best ways to defeat them.
• OpenSolaris: Shows Promise, Needs Work 18 hours, 50 minutes ago
  
  Last week, on my country's Liberation Day, Sun released OpenSolaris 2008.05, the much awaited first official fruit of Project Indiana. It delivers many of OpenSolaris' major features, such as DTrace, ZFS, containers, and more, in a Linux distribution-like package. The goal is to allow more people to experience Solaris. A few reviews have since hit the web.
• Trouble in paradise? 19 hours, 20 minutes ago
  
  Maybe it’s a coincidence but this week has seen evidence of tension between commercial open source vendors and elements of the open source user community. Matt Asay stirred up something of a hornet’s nest with his post questioning how open source vendors can find ways of encouraging users to contribute either code of cash in return for free software.
• Novell Readies Silverlight Clone for Linux 19 hours, 50 minutes ago
  
  A year after the introduction of Microsoft's Silverlight cross-platform, cross-browser media plug-in and streaming technology, Novell has released a Linux version for testing.
• Tiny boards gain Linux cross-tools support 20 hours, 20 minutes ago
  
  Gumstix says its tiny ARM-Linux SBCs now support the OpenEmbedded (OE) build environment. In addition to pre-built Linux images, the company now offers a "gumstix-oe" collection of source files and bitbake recipes, for those wishing to use the open source cross-compilation environment.
• Atom-based ECX board runs Linux 20 hours, 50 minutes ago
  
  Portwell has announced a single-board computer (SBC) using Intel's Centrino Atom chipset and ECX (embedded compact extended) form factor. Targeting applications such as kiosks and digital signage, the PEB-2736 supports dual displays, has a CompactFlash slot, and accepts an optional TPM (trusted platform module), says Portwell.
• Open source awards open for nominations 21 hours, 20 minutes ago
  
  Nominations are open for the third annual Sourceforge.net Community Choice Awards, with winners to be announced at OSCON 2008 in July. Nominations are accepted for all open source projects, not just SourceForge.net-based projects, and the categories include the intriguing "Most likely to get users sued."
• Linux-based remote access equipment adds monitoring 21 hours, 50 minutes ago
  
  Opengear is integrating the popular Nagios open-source network and device monitoring software in its open-source, uClinux-based remote access equipment. Opengear's SDT ("secure desktop tunneling") for Nagios product combines its SDT Connector remote access client software with Nagios central management software.
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