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Wireless Networking

Intel Releases Linux Driver For Centrino WLAN 285

Posted by timothy from the usefulness dept.
Werner Heuser writes "Finally Intel has made their different announcements about Linux support for the WLAN part of the Centrino technology become true. Though not yet officially announced an Open-Source driver with included firmware is available at SourceForge. The driver is still experimental and supposed to work with 2.4 Kernels as well as with 2.6 ones." (See these previous stories for some background.)
Software

Audacity 1.2.0 Released 329

Posted by timothy from the cross-platform-and-smooth dept.
mbrubeck writes "After almost two years of development, the free cross-platform sound editor Audacity has released a new stable version for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Audacity 1.2 has major improvements including professional-quality dithering and resampling, and new pitch- and speed-changing effects. Our previous stable release was announced on Slashdot in June 2002. More recently, Audacity was presented at this year's CodeCon in San Francisco."
Programming

An Open Source Alternative to Verizon's GetItNow? 54

Posted by Cliff from the routing-around-the-problem dept.
malachid69 asks: "Is there anyway for us, as open-source developers, to provide a free alternative to the Verizon GetItNow network, some way in which we can share and co-develop software for our phones, and provide a way for them to be emailed/SMSd onto the phones? Basically, is there any way for us to create a SourceForge equivalent to GetItNow?"
Hardware

DIY HVAC 315

Posted by michael from the PDQ dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I found this very interesting project called DIY Zoning. It allows one to add air flow balancing, temperature control, zoning, home automation, and more to an existing or new HVAC system. After getting a $200 electric bill, this sounds like a good solution for those who are getting screwed with outrageously high electric bills due to their HVAC unit especially since organizations like TVA have raised the electric rates."
Books

Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks 235

Posted by timothy from the canadians-with-solder dept.
PHPee (Rob Maeder) writes "Scott Fullam's Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks is an excellent book outlining all you need to know to get started in the wonderful world of hardware hacking. With step-by-step guides to fifteen useful, amusing and off the wall projects, even a novice hacker can be up and running with some basic hacks in a few hours. The book demonstrates various ways consumer electronics can be modified to do things they were never intended to do, and shows you just how much fun voiding your warranty can be." (We mentioned this book yesterday, too.) Read on for PHPee's review.
Spam

Two Spam Filters 10 Times As Accurate As Humans 487

Posted by timothy from the dev/null-is-getting-fatter dept.
Nuclear Elephant writes "The authors of two spam filters, CRM114 and DSPAM, announced recently that their filters have achieved accuracy rates ten times better than a human is capable of. Based on a study by Bill Yerazunis of CRM114, the average human is only 99.84% accurate. Both filters are reporting to have reached accuracy levels between 99.983% and 99.984% (1 misclassification in 6250 messages) using completely different approaches (CRM114 touts Markovan, while DSPAM implements a Dolby-type noise reduction algorithm called Dobly). If you're looking for a way to rid spam from your inbox, roll on over to one of these authors' websites."
Software

Firebird Relational Database 1.5 Final Out 445

Posted by simoniker from the the-other-white-meat dept.
firebirdy writes "The Firebird Project is pleased to announce that the v1.5 release of the Firebird database engine is now available for immediate download. The v1.5 release represents a major upgrade to the engine, which has been developed by an independent team of voluntary developers from the InterBase(tm) source code that was released by Borland under the InterBase Public License v.1.0 on 25 July 2000. Development on the Firebird 2 codebase began early in Firebird 1 development, with the porting of the Firebird 1 C code to C++ and the first major code-cleaning. Firebird 1.5 is the first release of the Firebird 2 codebase. Install packages are currently only available for Windows and Linux but other platforms should follow shortly." This product is not to be confused with newly renamed Firefox web browser, which was also called Firebird for some time.
Software

Freenet Project More Stable, In Need 606

Posted by simoniker from the programmers-can-be-retained-on-polo-mints dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Freenet Project is asking for donations to help keep their main programmer, Matthew Toseland. After a long time, finally Freenet, software which 'lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship' is working fine (and fast) again, since their overload problems are almost completely fixed. They even plan to write a paper about the overload problems. If you want to try, be sure to run the latest stable or unstable snapshot."
Caldera

SCO Lists Specific Code-Infringement Claims 780

Posted by timothy from the if-it-wasn't-for-you-meddling-kids dept.
mugnyte writes "Those tireless folks at groklaw have transcribed and published the documents from the latest IBM/SCO hearing. In it, the exact lines of the supposed Dynix / AIX / Linux logic are given. SCO claimed that Linux's read copy update, journaling file system, enterprise volume management system, AIO (Asynchronous I/O), and "scatter gather" I/O code had been derived from either AIX or Dynix/ptx. Now we can take a look at what SCO thinks makes Linux an enterprise-ready platform started at 2.4, stealing away their market share. However, IBM released these things under the GPL ... so what license did IBM really have from SCO to do this? Which raises the question, What license did SCO have from Novell to disallow this?"
Operating Systems

GEOS Available for Download After 18 Years 471

Posted by CowboyNeal from the oldies-but-goodies dept.
gp writes "Back in 1986, Berkeley Softworks presented GEOS, the Graphical Environment Operating System for the Commodore 64 (screenshots). GEOS effectively turned the 8-bit Commodore 64 into something very similar to a Macintosh, but for an 8th of the price. In 2004, pushed hard by rivaling C64 open source alternatives such as the Contiki operating system and desktop environment and the LUnix *nix clone, the owners of GEOS have finally decided to release GEOS to the public. Hordes of Commodore 64 users are expected to download the system." Sadly, there's no mention of GEOS for the Apple 2 series of computers, which also enjoyed this fine precursor of GUIs to come.
Programming

Eiffel Programming Contest Results 14

Posted by michael from the insert-tower-joke-here dept.
Berend de Boer writes "NICE, the nonprofit International Consortium for Eiffel, has announced the results of its fifth International Eiffel Programming Contest. This year had cash prizes of up to 1400 USD and software valued up to $8000 USD. There were 17 entries. The top scores were:ePalm, bringing Eiffel to PalmOS; ewg, generating C code binding glue; and Hbchess, a chess engine."
America Online

NSIS 2.0 Final Released 36

Posted by timothy from the install-you-must dept.
nandhp writes "The NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) project has finally released version 2.0 final. NSIS is a powerful open-source install system for Windows that is based on scripts. It was invented by Nullsoft for the distribution of WinAmp. You can get it here"
Programming

Bochs x86 IA-32 Emulator 2.1 Released 216

Posted by michael from the curiously-useful dept.
Asmodeus writes "Just noticed that the 2.1 release of the Bochs IA-32 emulator is out at the Bochs home page For those not in the know, Bochs is an open source implementation of the x86 instruction set(s) and a virtual PC (al la VMWare) which is capable of booting FreeDOS and Linux under the host control of another OS."
OS X

WINE for Mac OS X in Development 150

Posted by pudge from the but-can-i-play-games-on-it dept.
TylerL82 writes "The Darwine Project aims to get WINE up and running through X11 on Mac OS X/Darwin. According to the site, WINE itself compiles rather well, and they'll be using Bochs for the actual x86 emulation. Quite an interesting idea. It's crazy, but it just might work!"
Intel

Linux Centrino Driver Update 273

Posted by Hemos from the talking-more-about-it dept.
Edy52285 writes "An article on News.com talks about how Intel has been, and still is, dragging on releasing their Linux drivers for Centrino. Intel is reluctant to release its drivers as open source since doing so would reveal secrets about their wireless hardware. Linux in currently unable to take advantage of Centrino's wireless networking devices, without, that is, prying $20 from your thin wallet to buy Linuxant's DriverLoader (discussed in an earlier story). Will Swope (Intel's General Manager of Software and Solutions Group) said in an interview said "What I believe will happen is we will end up having a Linux compatibility driver that is not open source at first, then designing future drivers in such a way that they are open source but will not expose intellectual property," Intel seem to be taking its time on releasing the drivers, and even in the article, there is a lack of any commitment on a date or under what conditions the drivers will be released." Also, someone pointed out that it's worth checking out ndiswrapper for the driver.
Operating Systems

Open Source Operating System For Smart Cards 14

Posted by timothy from the even-smarter dept.
Scott writes "The OSNews site refers to a new open source operating system for smart cards, and more specifically adapted for contactless and dual-interface chips. This operating system named jayaCard ('success card' in malaysian ?) is compatible with ISO 7816 and ISO 14443. It is currently ported to freely available microprocessor like the ATmega161/162 from Atmel. A simulator version for Windows and Linux is already available and the full cleanroom source code can be inspected at Sourceforge. It should be noted also that although still in alpha version, this software is more complete, more standard, more complex but as more ambitious as SOSSE, the first available OS of this type."
Announcements

CodeCon, FOSDEM Both Around The Corner 8

Posted by timothy from the please-select-from-the-following-options dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The program for CodeCon was quietly announced a few days ago. The third edition of this groundbreaking programmer's conference, which adheres to a strict set of rules geared to providing a high-content event (such as requiring working demos of projects presented, and all presentations to be given by an active developer) is well stocked with interesting p2p, crypto, coding, and open source projects. Some of the highlights of this year's con include Audacity, Bram and Ross Cohen's Codeville, The U.S. Navy's Onion Router, and PGP Universal. Other notable applications, like Bittorrent, the Invisible IRC project, GNU Radio, and Mixminion all made their public debuts at past CodeCons. Produced by cypherpunk Len Sassaman and BitTorrent programmer Bram Cohen, this grass-roots conference is a must-see." CodeCon runs Feb. 20-22 in San Francisco, while FOSDEM (the Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting) is taking place in Brussels on Feb 20-21.
Education

Application-Centricity in Our Schools? 87

Posted by Cliff from the teaching-the-basics-not-a-software-package dept.
bccomm asks: "Here on Slashdot, we continually hear about new successes in bringing free software closer to the desktop. What about schools? I am a student and was once asked to redo an entire presentation because I had used Prosper instead of PowerPoint. The explanation I received from him was 'the curriculum says I'm supposed to teach Word, PowerPoint, etc, not word processing and presentations.' How is this for irony: presentation has to be about volunteer work/hobbies, and I chose to show that my computer runs a daily NetBSD snapshot. I think it just lost some effectiveness. Is anyone else bothered by this?"
GUI

GNOME/KDE Integration Gets A Few Boosts 339

Posted by timothy from the so-happy-together dept.
Balinares writes "Great bunch of news on the Linux desktop unification front. After the unification of GTK and Qt themes that Slashdot already reported on, it is OpenOffice's turn to get the unified look treatment (screenshot 1, screenshot 2, screenshot 3). In related news, the recently released QtGTK library allows to merge the Qt event loop with that of GTK. In other words, this means you can now easily use KDE's DCOP, IOslaves, and, last but not least, file dialogs, from inside your GTK apps. (Screenshot of this feature used in XMMS2: 1 2). It comes with a tutorial that explains the basics. Finally, the new fuse_kio tool now makes it possible to use KDE's IOslaves directly at the filesystem level, from any Linux app. 2004 is really beginning well for all those of us who use Linux as their primary desktop!"
Software

MUTE Grows In Popularity, Iterations 50

Posted by simoniker from the novamute-not-far-behind dept.
jcr13 writes "MUTE is a search-and-download file sharing network that uses ant-inspired routing to make both downloaders and uploaders anonymous. Version 0.2 was released today (change log). Since its mid-December 0.1 release, MUTE has risen from complete obscurity to one of the top-ten most active SourceForge projects. Several people have described MUTE as a "third-generation file sharing network," with the first two generations being Napster and Gnutella (and generation zero being the web---remember when MP3s were traded through web pages?). Each generation circumvents the tactics that the RIAA used to squash the previous generation. Alas, each generation is less and less efficient (though MUTE's dynamic routing works surprisingly well). MUTE was discussed in a previous Slashdot story. Oh, and if you are wondering, it's M.U.T.E., lady, an acronym, not "mute," and we had best not go into it any further."

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