julie-h writes "DVD Jon has done it again. This time it wasn't Apple the target, but Microsoft's WMV9 video format. There is as always a working Proof of Concept program with screenshots."

ZX81 writes "We've just completed an interview with Mark Spencer AKA Markster, the creator of Asterisk (an Open Source PBX replacement running on Linux). He details the start of the Asterisk project and the direction for the future."

tbirdsaw writes "I was browsing for information on how to run Linux on the PS2 without a Linux Kit (they've stopped selling them in the U.S., AFAIK). While searching, I stumbled across Sony's Open Source Code website. They have quite a few products that run an embedded linux system, including some professional video switchers (MVS8000?) and at least several of their relatively new XDCAM disc-based video format decks. Might make for some hardware/firmware hacking in the near future?"

sameerdesai writes "Seattletimes is carying this story on Intel helping major countries like China and India to help build Linux machines as an alternative to Microsoft Windows. It definitely looks like both Microsoft and Intel are using the big potential market in Asia to establish a foothold. Microsoft is using its scare tactics to warn of possible lawsuits because Linux violates about 228 patents. What do fellow slashdotters think on trends of OS and hardware in Asia will be?"

ChocLinux writes "A South African organisation has produced what it claims is the first television series dedicated to promoting open source software. The first episode of the show included an interview with Richard Stallman, who founded the GNU project, and Robin Rowe, who runs the Linux Movies Group, which promotes the use of Linux in Hollywood."

linuxwrangler writes "InfoWorld is reporting that IDC's report on Q3 server sales shows that Linux server revenue topped $1 billion for the first time. Linux servers showed year-over-year gain of 42.6 percent. Windows server revenue grew by 13.3 percent year-over-year while the mid-range server marked dominated by Sun showed a 10.2 percent decline this quarter."

An anonymous reader writes "This study compares the real-time capabilities of various Linux kernels. It was part of a project to upgrade the control software in water-wave generators at research institutions around the world. The results of the study were used by Akamina for the selection of a new RTOS for the control system upgrade of Canada's largest hydraulics and coastal engineering laboratory, the National Research Council Canadian Hydraulics Centre in Ottawa."

Lispy writes "The founder of the popular Dropline GNOME environment for Slackware, Todd Kulesza, announced yesterday that he is leaving his project. In a note on the Dropline homepage he explains that he simply doesn't have the time to maintain three different Open Source projects anymore. With Patrick Volkerding being temporarily out of business and Todd leaving Dropline GNOME, I guess the future for Slackware GNOME fans doesn't look bright these days. Who wants to hop in and continue Dropline?"

quamaretto writes "CRN has named Linus Torvalds the most influential executive of 2004, in the magazine's feature list of the top 25 executives of the year. For perspective, he is followed by Sam Palmisano of IBM and Steve Balmer of Microsoft. The coverage of Torvalds is 5 pages, including pictures, a written article, and a lot of interview material. Topics are business centric, including SCO, OSDL, and Torvald's personality in development and management."

Robin "Roblimo" Miller is well-known in the open-source world for advocating cheap, user-friendly Linux computing and demonstrating that it's not only possible but available, right now. (He's also a writer and editor at NewsForge, and the editor in chief of OSTG, of which Slashdot is a part, and therefore one of my bosses; take that for what it's worth.) Roblimo's new book Point and Click Linux really consists of three things: the book itself, an included copy on CD of the Debian-based SimplyMepis Linux distribution, and a DVD featuring Roblimo's multi-part narrated video guide for getting started with Linux, Mepis and KDE. "Getting started" is key; this book is for the interested beginner, not the power user. Read on for the rest of my review.

Job Diogenes Ribeiro Borges writes "The Smart Package Manager is an intelligent tool that works on the 'dependency hell' of software upgrading and installation on linux. Works with all major distributions (APT, APT-RPM, YUM, URPMI, etc), supporting multiple sources and technologies concurrently. Yes, you could install from multiple sources, from deb, rpm, tgz at same time! Smart Package Manager is being developed by Conectiva and is the tool that makes the Magic of CrossPlatform package management, behind the recently announced 'Four Linux Vendors Agree On An LSB Implementation.' You can get screenshots here (portuguese texts) and a README here."

Ted Haeger writes "Two weeks after Novell ships the Novell Linux Desktop, HP announces that they are certifying their hardware and allowing customers to order systems with NLD pre-loaded through HP "Factory Express.""

Chris writes "Progeny Linux does Debian one step better. If you like Ubuntu you'll love Progeny. A slick GNOME desktop, a solid Debian core, and the Anaconda installer have made Progeny my new desktop of choice. Progeny has also recently become part of the Linux Core Consortium (LCC) to implement Linux Standard Base (LSB) 2.0. Watch your back Ubuntu for Progeny's new 'Progeny Debian 2.0 Developer Edition RC1' release. At OSDir we just had to install this distro, and take some screenshots. Our screenshot tour will take you from boot, through the installation, to the desktop. Then we'll have a look at the taskbar, menus, system configuration, and a few of the newly added features of this great distro."

An anonymous reader points out this SecurityFocus alert, which starts "The Linux kernel is reported susceptible to multiple remote vulnerabilities in the SMBFS network file system. These vulnerabilities may lead to the execution of attacker-supplied machine code, information disclosure of kernel memory, or kernel crashes, denying service to legitimate users. Versions of the kernel in both the 2.4, and the 2.6 series are reported susceptible to various issues."

Scott_Blayney writes "This guy contends that now that Sun is releasing Solaris 10 under an open source license, Linux will begin to wane in popularity. To quote, "Linux will probably not grow much beyond its current market share of about 10 % leaving Red Hat and especially Novell with a big problem." "

jg21 writes "LinuxWorld draws attention to a curious use of ESR's The Cathedral and the Bazaar by the Sun Microsystems exec who currently talks about Linux more than he does even about Java. Apparently Sun's President and COO Jonathan Schwartz said at a press briefing last week that Java with its JCP is more like ESR's Bazaar than Linux, which he dismissed as being "awfully cathedral-like" since Linus is the final arbiter (or Great Dictator), and not a committee." But be sure you don't mis-use the word Java in this Bazaar or the Mall Police will totally get you.

An anonymous reader writes "Check out this blog entry in Loosely Coupled about ActiveGrid's new open source Grid Application Server based on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) stack. Not to start another PHP vs. Java flame war, but it looks like LAMP is starting to grow up, and that it is much better suited for next generation applications than J2EE."

An anonymous reader sends us this EWeek story, following-up on the recent Linux patent scare. The author of the patent study is contacted, and says, "Open source faces no more, if not less, legal risk than proprietary software. The market needs to understand that the study Microsoft is citing actually proves the opposite of what they claim it does."

An anonymous reader writes "NEC and Panasonic have developed three Linux-powered 3G mobile phones to be introduced in Japan in the coming months -- NEC's N900iL, NEC's N901iC, and Panasonic's P901i. Of the three, only NEC's N900iL is currently shipping. The N900iL is a dual-network 3G/VoIP handset that works as a 3G mobile phone (using DoCoMo's W-CDMA/FOMA technologies), VoIP terminal, or both simultaneously. All three phones are based on the Linux 3G mobile phone software platform announced by NEC and Panasonic earlier this week."

Ninjy writes "Techworld has a story up about the possibility of the 2.7 kernel forking to accomodate large patch sets. Will this actually happen, and will the community back such a decision? "