cpfeifer asks: "Russ Miles wrote about going through the pain of setting up his own infrastructure for his OSS project, AspectXML. He asks: 'Are there tools out there that make this process much easier, and perhaps ones that I could take advantage of by moving my own open source project to? Also what experiences have people had with the different community projects?' Should you start up your own gforge server, host it on Sourceforge, or perhaps look to one of the OSS groups like Apache, Codehaus or Tigris?"

mengel asks: "So this last week, I repeated my annual ritual of trashing my scratch partition, making a FAT filesystem on it, booting Microsoft Windows(tm), and installing tax software to do my taxes. I had hoped, with the advent of Xandros, and of Linspire (formerly Lindows), that one of these increasingly important commercial companies would have talked someone like Intuit, or the Tax Cut guys, into developing this years tax software against Wine, so that it would also run on Linux under Wine as well as on MSWindows. So what has to happen before the companies who write Tax Cut and TurboTax will do versions that least run under Wine, much less native Linux versions? What can we do to help make that happen?"

yipyow writes "A few weeks ago VIA Technologies posted software based on Nullsoft's WASTE, as reported here a few days ago. VIA PadLockSL included both a Windows and Linux client and some special extensions to work with security hardware built into certain VIA products. It was released under the GPL so I managed to snag a copy of the source code right before VIA suddenly removed their page (Google cache). I have posted Linux compilation instructions and mirrored the source here. If VIA has decided not to pursue the project further, I think the F/OSS community should turn this project into something, it has potential to be a great tool."

daten writes "VIA has released the source code to their Padlock SL product, based on the Nullsoft WASTE code previously pulled by AOL. Padlock SL offers encrypted chat, instant messaging and file sharing over a private peer-to-peer network. Unlike WASTE, which is still under active development, the VIA client offers a graphical interface for both Windows and Linux users and simpler configuration."

gbjbaanb writes "Cool new urban battlefield weaponry for the geeks to fear. The Id Sniper is a nonlethal sniper rifle that fires tiny GPS microchips into the body of the target. The idea is that a rowdy crowd can be tagged for later 'processing' by law enforcement officials. Apparently the chip hitting you will feel like a mosquito-bite lasting a fraction of a second. Although it looks, and sounds like a cyberpunk weapon, its for real from a Danish company that has already shown it off at a Chinese Police exhibition. check out the tracking software." Here's hoping this is cautionary artwork.

Keith Young asks: "Over the past month, we have seen a 1500% increase of spyware denials on our firewall primarily due to WildTangent 'spyware' installed with AOL IM 5.5 and adware installed with Weatherbug. Since many of these widely-installed types of applications have an automatic upgrade feature, how can these be tested for license agreements, spyware, and security 'irregularities'? Is this another reason to approach management to choose only open source alternatives?"

doubleacr writes "MacSlash is reporting that PlayFair has been removed from SourceForge.net. Didn't see that one coming." We posted about PlayFair on Monday. SourceForge.net received a DMCA complaint from Apple on Thursday, claiming PlayFair is in violation of the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA, section 1201(a)(2). As per SourceForge.net policy, the project has been disabled. Should the project managers file a counterclaim, the project could be restored. SourceForge.net is owned by OSDN, the parent company of Slashdot.

The two big releases yesterday, Apple's Security Update and the DRM-canceling PlayFair, are causing problems. The Security Update appears to break cvs over pserver under some conditions (hangs for a long time, then quits with a malloc error), and ryanw writes, "according to the SF.net forum for playfair, the 'iTMS DRM stripping tool' destroys your purchased songs: the resulting files crash iTunes, the iPod, and QuickTime." Those who follow the rules -- wait a few days to install Apple's updates, and make backups of your iTMS files -- will be unaffected.

elinenbe writes "The Linux on iPod Project has just crossed a milestone. Currently their firmware works on all ipod models other then the new mini. Sound plays and for many people it has more features then the original iPod firmware!"

goombah99 writes "PlayFair is an integrated utility that removes the DRM from AAC music files protected by Apple's FairPlay encryption. Information is limited, but the source code is on SourceForge.net and it appears to actually remove the encryption itself and not simply hijack the QuickTime audio stream as earlier methods did. The cracking operation can only be done on songs the user has already has valid licenses for and requires either an iPod or a windows computer for key recovery. If you choose to redistribute these songs you will be violating the contract you bought them under: better hope they aren't watermarked or you might end up paying for releasing one in the wild. To me the authors are vandals not revolutionaries, and may have ensured WMA becomes the standard."

nberardi writes "On Monday, April 5, 2004, as part of the Shared Source Initiative, Microsoft released the source code for the Windows Installer XML (WiX) developer tool to SourceForge under the IBM Common Public License or CPL. The WiX project is the first Shared Source Initiative to go "public" on Source Forge rather than a Microsoft site. It is also the first to use an externally created Open Source license. Microsoft supports the idea that a software developer should be free to choose how they license their work and for the goals of WiX, the CPL was the right fit. Is this another ploy from Microsoft to not look like the bad guy, or do you think they are embracing on the Open Source movement?" Slashdot and SourceForge are both part of OSDN.

SiegeX writes "Zero Install ,which is apart of the ROX desktop environment is not just a new packaging system, it's a whole new way of thinking; a way that I believe is exactly what Linux needs to become a serious contender for Joe User's desktop. Zero Install uses an NFS to both run *and* install apps from. The apps are all self-contained in their own directory; binaries, docs, source code and all. Once the app has been downloaded its kept in a cache from that point on to minimize delay. The beauty becomes apparent when Zero Install is combined with ROX which runs the application by just clicking on the directory it was installed to. Deleting the application along with all the other misc files is as simple as removing the directory it's contained in. This method of partitioning applications in their own directories also allows installing multiple versions of any application trivial. This is something even the greatest of technophobes could understand and use with ease."

Mithix writes "Gizmodo is reporting that the popular (and free) SSH client PuTTY is now in beta for Symbian OS, the OS of choice for the Nokia Series 60, the Nokia 9200 Communicator Series, and the N-Gage. Finally, something redeeming for the N-Gage?"

Petrochard writes "For all of you programmers who are big chess fans, check out Apple's release of Chess 2.0's source code. It would be cool if somebody could make a Simpson's Chess mod." Chess is based on sjeng (logic) and glChess (interface).

Xenna writes "The Squeezebox MP3 Player has found a new application: With the Videobox software and some cabling it becomes a networked Video Player. This is the latest development to come out of the active community Slim Devices have managed to attract around their very hackable MP3 players. Only last week the SoftSqueeze software player was announced on the Slim users mailing list. The Squeezebox was reviewed on Slashdot last December."

Lulu of the Lotus-Ea writes "The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is holding a demonstration of its Free Software voting system in Santa Clara, California on April 1, 2004 (yeah, I know the date, but it's not a joke). An announcement on the OVC homepage has further details. The Sourceforge hosted EVM2003 project of the OVC has produced touchscreen and vision-impared interface voting systems that produce visually inspectable (or machine-aided audio verification) paper ballots. As well, OVC will demonstrate systems for reconcilliation and reporting of precint results, and provide handouts and a presentation explaining the virtues of a publicly inspectible system with a tamper-proof paper trail."

WildCode writes "SCO is now targeting Aussies in its continuing Linux licence saga. According to the story, one Aussie organization has already signed up for the licence. The ACCC has no comment at this time but this certainly puts a twist on things as the ACCC were waiting for the results of the lawsuits in the U.S. before making any judgement. Personally I think its time for the ACCC to say to SCO 'wait for the U.S outcomes before taking action here.'" An anonymous reader points to another story at internetnews.com.

rocketjam writes "Amiga, Inc. announced today that it has sold the Amiga Operating System to KMOS, Inc., a corporation which 'develops and distributes enabling technology.' The deal included 'all of Amiga's right, title, source code, and all versions, from the "Classic Amiga Operating System" through AmigaOS 4.0 and all subsequent versions.' A spokesman said the sale would have no adverse affect on the release of a consumer version of AmigaOS 4.0 later this year. Amiga said it made the move in order to focus on the growing mobile market. The long saga of AmigaOS 4.0 continues." Reader Da writes "there're always other options should the Amiga curse continue. Also mentioned on OSNews."

Nuclear Elephant writes "DSPAM v2.10 is finally available, after four months of development. This is the first stable release to include Bayesian Noise Reduction which was recently mentioned on Slashdot and in Wired News as an algorithm providing accuracy levels as high as 10x that of a human. Some other new features include Neural Networking - which finds nodes in a network that are contextually similar to form a decision matrix, Global Filtering - which provides SpamAssassin-like out-of-the-box type filtering for new users until they build up their own wordlist, Automatic Whitelisting - which automatically learns who your trusted senders are, and many other optimizations and enhancements. Head on over and download the latest tar ball."

apropos asks: "An interesting question came up recently when discussing (yet again) starting an open-source based consulting company: 'How would you design the ultimate virtual office with open source software?' With things like fax, VoIP, web, email, security and office suites all available as open source products, what kind of useful things could be done? One idea that came to mind was emailing answering machine recordings. What would you put into your ultimate virtual office solution?"