Anonymous Reader writes: “LinuxDevices.com has published its weekly Embedded Linux Newsletter for August 1, 2002, with all the latest news and info from the exciting world of Embedded Linux and Linux-based gadgets.”

Anonymous Reader writes: “The record industry’s peer-to-peer networks have hardly been the most popular offerings. How can they be? Not only do they charge egregious prices to download tracks you can pick up free from the Napster clones, but they have been highly restrictive in terms of the music that is available and what you can do with it once you spent your cash. The market is forcing that to change. http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/pressplay2 .html“

pdajames writes: “Cambridge faculty have discovered that the university is planning to change its IP rules, says this report, and they’re not happy about it. The new rules would claim ownership of all research produced by faculty in the course of their work, clamping down on Cambridge’s previously liberal regime. It could also lead to Bill Gates controlling Cambridge-generated software – read the last bit!”

“Mozilla 1 and Netscape 7, which are closely related, offer few features that IE doesn’t–the only
obvious one is the novice-friendly Composer Web-design module. But they have one thing Microsoft’s
browser will never have: the open-source cachet. Designers involved in the Mozilla project have
labored for years to build, from the ground up, an Internet suite (browser, e-mail, and chat) that takes
little room, loads pages fast, supports Internet standards zealously, protects your privacy, and doesn’t
clutter your system with unwanted add-ons or come-ons. Although Mozilla has no frills and still
contains some very minor bugs, it largely delivers on that promise. If you want a grassroots alternative
to Microsoft’s vision of what the Web should be, this browser is it.” More at PCWorld.com.

And now, from the other side of the fence: “So it goes with .Net. Round 1 of Microsoft’s Web services platform was a lot about consumers, software as services and Microsoft as the ultimate storage vessel for everyone’s personal data. We’re about to enter “.Net 2.0” over the next few months, and it’s looking better. Better tools, better integration with Windows 2000, a more open architecture that gives customers more flexibility and a renewed focus on application integration and B2B instead of B2C. Now is when we’ll see exactly how competitive the Java folks can remain as they bicker about which way the wind’s blowing while Microsoft steams ahead. (For the sake of us all, I hope they can stay very competitive.)” More at CIO.com.

Frank Cohen writes: “TestMaker 3 beta 4 is now available for immediate download at the www.PushToTest.com Web site.

TestMaker is a framework for building intelligent test agents to check Web Services for scalability, performance and functionality. TestMaker is built on NetBeans, comes with Jython as its scripting language, and an extensible library of test objects that implement protocol handlers for HTTP, HTTPS, SOAP, and XML-RPC. TestMaker comes under an Apache style license.

The beta 4 version fixes bugs and improves usability:

– TestMaker launcher utility solves a start-up bug for JRE users

– By default, the sample agents directory is mounted and ready to run. 14 sample test agents are now included

– Proxy server and SOAP with SSL support are now built-in

– An execution user interface enables users to stop running agents

– The on-line documentation is updated to include chapters from Testing Web Services, an upcoming book about how Elsevier Science, Sun, BEA and IBM are testing Web Services using TestMaker.

-Frank”

–By Grant Gross –

The sponsors of an international Open Source in government conference scheduled for October 17 and18 in Washington, D.C., are calling for presentations from a wide variety of experts on Open Source software.
Organizers of Open Source: A Case for e-Government are hoping to draw speakers — and about 400 listeners — from the United States and many other countries, says Tony Stanco, senior policy analyst at the Cyberspace Policy Institute at The George Washington University, one of the sponsors of the conference. Other sponsors are the Information for Development Program at the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, Government Online International Network and the U.S. General Services Administration’s Office of Intergovernmental Solutions.

Stanco says the focus is on getting more government agencies to use Open Source software, in both “developed and developing” nations.

Stanco says organizers are looking for speakers who have mature projects that governments may like to use and for anyone inside or outside of government with an interesting story to tell on how Open Source is being used in government. At least one person has been asked to speak after organizers saw him talking about Open Source and government on NewsForge.

“The main goal is to get people (inside government and outside
government) who are interested in getting Open Source into government all in the
same room, so critical mass is produced to move forward,” Stanco says. “It has recently dawned on people responsible for e-government that what they are proposing is going to cost billions of dollars and fundamentally requires interoperability. Once they see that, they realize that:

” 1. they don’t know where the money is going to come from and

“2. that by nature proprietary solutions want to exclude long-term interoperability.”

Proposals from traditional vendors often don’t achieve the goals of government projects, Stanco says, so many e-government projects are stalled.
“So e-government officials are looking to Open Source to get them out of
a bind,” he adds. “Open Source is by nature interoperable and avoids vendor
lock-ins. Also, Open Source can be many times more cost effective. So,
governments everywhere, including the U.S., are looking to Open Source to see how
it will help them implement e-government. The purpose of the conference is
to help show them the way.”

The deadline for conference speaker proposals is August 19. The call for speakers and papers page is here.

Anonymous Reader writes: “In this technical article at LinuxDevices.com, Matchbox project leader Matthew Allum introduces his creation: a small footprint window manager for PDAs and other resource-constrained embedded devices. Allum recalls why he decided to embark on the project, outlines its key objectives, describes its architecture and unique characteristics, and ponders its future.”

Matt Wade writes: “Codewalkers.com has posted their latest PHP Coding Contest. In this latest challenge scripts will compete head to head in a game of Capture the Flag. The object of the game is to capture the other scripts flag or eliminate the other script. The script with the best battle plan wins! The prizes include a Zend t-shirt, a copy of Zend Studio 2.5, and a copy of PHP Developer’s Dictionary from Sams Publishing. For more information, see the official contest page at http://codewalkers.com/php-contest.phpCodewalkers.com is a community site dedicated to the PHP developer. They host a bi-weekly PHP Coding Contest to help promote the use of PHP.”

Anonymous Reader writes: “A German project that boots from CD or floppy-and-CD and runs Debian ‘Woody,” KDE-3.02, OpenOffice.org, and a whole lot of other applications and tools has been released. It’s called “Knoppix-3.1,” and it is Project of the week on Linux and Main, which says that everybody ought to download and burn a copy.”