Z0mb1eman asks: "My company is considering replacing our aging CrystalReports with an open source solution. We are currently doing our research, and the choices seem promising -- JasperReports, Actuate-backed BIRT, and Pentaho, which seems to combine other open-source reporting tools. All have some level of commercial support, but are they ready to replace established solutions like Crystal Reports or even Actuate? Is your company using an Open Source reporting tool, and what have been your experiences with such tools? Are there any other choices we should consider? What should we expect if we make the decision to switch?"

MoneyConscious asks: "My company is still pretty small (100 people) and has never had any real structure around much of its operations. I manage the IT group and would like to get a handle on our yearly budget - expected expenditures for planned (and some unplanned) projects, plus regular maintenance and growth. I've taken a crack at a few different spreadsheets, but always seem to come up with something a few weeks later that requires a re-write of the budget (for instance, planned versus actual cost). We are a mix of Windows and Linux, so I have some flexibility in regards to budgeting software solutions (web-based SourceForge apps, Excel templates, and the like). What tools do you use to keep track of estimates and record actual expenditures to see how your budget process is doing?"

Martin Ecker writes "The Orange Book is back in its second edition. Randi J. Rost's "OpenGL Shading Language" (also called the Orange Book because of its orange cover) published by Addison-Wesley returns with 4 new chapters, roughly 140 new pages and quite a few new sample shaders. Like the first edition, the second edition of the book is one of the best introductions to GLSL - the OpenGL Shading Language - that also explains in-depth how to develop shaders in GLSL for lighting, shadows, animation, and other topics. The book targets an audience that is already familiar with computer graphics and with OpenGL. Knowledge of the C programming language is also advantageous for the reader. Since I've reviewed the first edition previously, I will focus on the new chapters of the book in this review." Read the rest of Martin's review.

karvind writes "According to Wired, 'Krugle' is set to next month. The search engine indexes programming code and documentation from open-source repositories like SourceForge, and includes corporate sites for programmers like the Sun Developer Network. The index will contain between 3 and 5 terabytes of code by the time the engine launches in March. According to article, Krugle also contains intelligence to help it parse code and to differentiate programming languages, so a PHP developer could search for a website-registration system written in PHP simply by typing 'PHP registration system.'" Update: 02/17 21:04 GMT by Z : Summary edited for accuracy.

ThinkingInBinary writes "Want easier power management and better battery life on your Linux laptop? Try powermgr, a daemon that automatically (or manually, if you choose) switches your system between power "profiles". It has support for ACPI (of course) as well as Asus, Dell, IBM, Omnibook, and Toshiba extensions. It can control CPU governor, screen brightness, wireless card, laptop mode (via services), runlevel, services, and more, and can switch based on AC adapter and battery state, load average, temperature, running processes, and more. Tests indicate that it can prolong battery life by 20 minutes to almost two hours, depending on what the system is doing. Try it out!"

DavonZ asks: "I have recently requested hosting from SourceForge for andLinux, a Windows based Linux distribution. Since andLinux is essentially an operating system, it is quite large (500MB for the first release), and SourceForge rejected the hosting request due to its size. Since andLinux will allow handheld development environments to be 'plugged in', hosting it could require gigs of space. I have looked into alternative distribution methods like ed2k and Bittorrent, but the FUD associated with such distribution methods can slow adaption of the project. I have also considered purchasing hosting, but that is costly, would require donations and the project is not yet presentable for even beta release...at least not yet. What alternatives to SourceForge are available for large projects like this that include the 'bells and whistles' that SourceForge has (CVS, forums, mailing lists, bug tracking, etc.)?"

akutz asks: "I am sure many of you have asked yourselves this question before: do I run my own server, or take advantage of my employer's hardware and/or free online hosts? I recently brought my own personal server online that provides web, e-mail, source control, and directory services for myself. I like the warm snuggly feeling that all my data is on my box and it is mine, mine, mine. However, I have also just burdened myself with maintaining a server when my employer, The University of Texas at Austin, has plenty of servers that I could use for this very purpose. There are also plenty of free services online that do this, such as Gmail and Sourceforge. So the question is, which is better, running your own server or letting someone else do it for you?"

psykocrime writes "Line56 is reporting that IBM has open-sourced core components of their UIMA project. UIMA is (or was) an IBM Research Project for managing "unstructured information" such as free-text. IBM describes UIMA as: 'an open, industrial-strength, scalable and extensible platform for creating, integrating and deploying unstructured information management solutions from combinations of semantic analysis and search components. [...] and makes the core Java framework available as open source software to provide a common foundation for industry and academia to collaborate and accelerate the world-wide development of technologies critical for discovering the vital knowledge present in the fastest growing sources of information today.' The newly opened source is available at SourceForge."

For years now Slashdot has posted what we call "Sectional Content". That is to say, stories that we think are good, but since we try to keep the Slashdot Main Page to around 15 stories per day, some stuff just gets put into the sections. This content is mostly lost to readers who simply don't know it exists. Today we're deploying new code to help you find that content (and alternatively, to disable it).

Anonymous Coward writes "Xming has been released with latest Xorg X11R6.9. Xming is a Free Software port of the X Window Server to Microsoft Windows. It shares the same source code base as Cygwin/X but does not depend on the Cygwin environment or cygwin1.dll. Xming is a fully featured X Window Server that is very simple to install and use interactively. Xming X Server for Windows, is made from Xorg (X11R6.9), and a patch bundle, cross-compiled with MinGW and Pthreads-Win32 For MS Windows users who have never tried Linux this could prove to be the easiest way when used with Microsoft Services for Unix (SFU) or coLinux."

bfioca writes "Where are the all-in-one PHP frameworks that make building well-factored and maintainable applications as easy as building simple sites? O'Reilly ONLamp's recent article Simplify PHP Development with WASP shows how to make a simple database-backed site with WASP in just a few lines of code. Other PHP 5 frameworks such as symfony and PRADO have been getting a lot of recent attention as well."

arclightfire writes "We recently wrote an article for The Independent listing the top ten open source projects. It was hard getting the list down to ten, but we did; here's the top ten - Wikipedia, Firefox, Open Office, Bittorrent, MediaWiki, Xvid, pbb, Outfoxed, dyne:bolic, GIMP, Apache and SourceForge." What would you call your favorite projects? Obviously, this list isn't strictly software projects, so be creative.

An anonymous reader writes "After more than a year since their last update aMSN has published version 0.95. New features include 'webcam support, tabbed chat windows, improved skin plugin support, new file transfer protocol, many new plugins (like Ink and Nudge support), an improved bug report system, as well as LOTS of bug fixes.' In addition to many new features and fixes the aMSN site has been given a face lift to (hopefully) facilitate ease of use."

AlexDV asks: "I'm currently a second-term, CIS major at DeVry University. This coming term, I will have the choice of studying either Java or C# for my Object Oriented Programming class. Now I'm a diehard Linux user, so I'm slightly conflicted here. Which should I take?"

BerkeleyDude writes "Gaim 2.0.0beta1 has been released! Here is the changelog. New features include account status, away messages, etc, UPnP and NAT traversal support, new UI for buddylist, chat windows and preferences."

An anonymous reader writes "Jabber has published the experimental draft Jingle specs, which extend XMPP for use in voice over IP (VoIP), video, and other peer-to-peer multimedia sessions. Google released an open-source library called 'Libjingle' on SourceForge. Libjingle is a set of components provided by Google that let your programs interoperate with Google Talk's peer-to-peer and voice calling capabilities. The package includes source code for Google's implementation of Jingle and Jingle-Audio."

BlueMoon writes "The Free60 Project wiki and developers mailinglist has been launched. The project aims to port open source operating systems like GNU/Linux and Darwin to the Microsoft Xbox 360 gaming console. The site already contains some interesting details about the Xbox 360 security: per-box key stored on CPU, boot ROM will be on CPU too and a hypervisor verifies the running state of the kernel."

drizzle writes "There's an interesting story on the Apache Marketing blog about whether or not Apache projects come with too much overhead, especially compared with other services or a roll-your-own approach. The article states, 'It's true that compared with SourceForge, Apache has a more rigorous management structure. The ASF has formalized processes and procedures that we believe represent best practices governance. All new projects must pass through an incubation period to ensure that all of the project's members have internalized these processes. However, each project's leadership has a tremendous amount of discretion in managing within this framework.' There is also a follow up article written by one of the httpd developers about 'What Apache brings to the table.' The article cites community, experience, legal framework, diversity, brand strength, and networking as reasons why developers and companies should consider bringing their projects over to Apache."

An anonymous reader writes "YouTube, the self-described "Flickr of video" has now received $3.5M in funding from Sequoia Capital, the same VC firm that funded Yahoo!, Google, and PayPal. Competitors of YouTube include Revver, launched just last month and founded by Ian Clarke of The Freenet Project fame. As of now, both services are free. With the online video space heating up in recent months, the question is who will discover the best business model." YouTube was first mentioned on Slashdot shortly after its launch three months ago.

B1-66ER asks: "I'm trying build a team of elite overclockers for HWLogic, and a group of developers for our mulit-platform benchmark CPU-XMark. Now, before you tell me to use SF's Project Help Wanted, just remember: Linus Torvalds didn't have the online community development tools that we use now. I'd like to go beyond the help of SourceForge [which is part of the same company as Slashdot] to ultimately create my own organization in the way that Linus has now. It is my goal to one day get CPU-XMark to be a multi-platform Open Source clone of Futuremark's 3DMark05. Any suggestions?"