This article argues that the shift towards Web services has reduced the attractiveness of the current generation of Open Source Web products. The only solution is for Open Source to adopt a Web services architecture, and fast. Fortunately, there is one at hand, and it's not dotGNU! Can the Open Sourcers wake up and save the world before it is too late? Read on to find out.

AlphaWorks team has added a pair of PCs to a modified Ford Explorer, dubbed the IBM TechMobile, which act as the brains of an elaborate embedded computing demonstration based on Linux and Java technologies. Included in the suite of cool apps that the team has incorporated into the TechMobile are eye movement monitoring functions, voice recognition, BlueTooth wireless connectivity, wireless Web access via a cellular modem, the Linux operating system, and Java-based middleware technologies which glue the various system software components together.

"Walk into the Largo, Florida, city hall and look at the two computer screens behind the reception desk. Instead of the typical Windows "Start" button in the lower left-hand corner, they have a KDE "Gear" logo, as do almost all of the 400-plus monitors on Largo employees' desks. Receptionists, administrative assistants, and division fire chiefs here all use Linux instead of Windows, and most of them don't really notice one way or the other.

Red Hat has released its E-Commerce Package, an open-source product designed for medium-sized businesses. The most useful piece of new information from this report is the information on the price structure: "The suite is priced at $275 per month for a minimum of 12 months or for a one-year license at $2,995. The package will be available starting August 22, but preorders will be accepted by the Research Triangle Park starting next week."

"Today, we'll take a look at what is involved in adding a 2nd hard drive to your system. I'll assume, fair or not, that your setup is like mine. You have a hard drive that has ext2 on it as your 1st hard drive and that it is on /dev/hda. I'll also assume that, like me, you began running out of disk space and said "Hard drives are very inexpensive these days, let me go grab one that has about 25 gigs on it and I'll put Reiser File System on it so that I don't have to wait an hour for the file system check to happen."

It is important to carry out a scanning of your own network, and look for vulnerabilities. There are several scanning tools for this purpose. Here we look at nmap. Nmap is among the most complete scanners and security tools. It allows the system administrator to scan the networks in order to know which servers are active and which services they offer. For this purpose, nmap offers several scanning techniques. This article will work on a limited number of them, reviewing (maybe teaching?) some aspects of TCP protocol."

If you are running Linux, or most UNIX variants, and you have taken appropriate precautions, you probably have a simple workaround. This workaround is also useful for the times when your X server crashes, and you need to clean up the carcass. I am writing this on my desktop computer in spite of the fact that my monitor just died. I'm using my laptop as an X terminal. The purpose of this note is to tell you how to do that.

Linux users looking for something to help speed up their systems may want to consider PowerTweak Linux, a free system optimization tool. It runs as a daemon in the background on a Linux machine and can be used to tune CPU performance by modifying the configuration registers in a Linux system. The program also can be used to adjust CDROM drive speeds, optimize file system performance using " /proc/sys " entries and change power management settings by interacting with hard drive " sleep " settings, similar to the use of the " hdparm " command.

Seasoned open-source code developers are concerned that an effort to produce an open-source alternative to Microsoft's .Net development platform may be held hostage by the software giant, if the endeavor ever gets off the ground.

Recent public statements by Microsoft executives have cast Linux and the open-source philosophy that underlies it as, at the minimum, bad for competition, and, at worst, a “cancer” to everything it touches.