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Baystar exec says MSFT behind high-burn-rate funding of SCO

By on October 10, 2006 in Linux, Microsoft, OpenSource, Technology

OSNews is pointing to the story that Microsoft's SCO Involvement Revealed. “A declaration by SCO's backer, BayStar has revealed that the software Giant Microsoft had more links to the anti-Linux bad-boy. The declaration made by from BayStar general partner Larry Goldfarb has turned up as part of IBM's evidence to the court. Goldfarb says that Baystar had been chucking USD 50 million at SCO despite concerns that it had a high cash burn rate. He also claims that former Microsoft senior VP for corporate development and strategy Richard Emerson discussed “a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would 'backstop', or guarantee in some way, BayStar's investment”.

I don't think it's really a surprise that MSFT and SUN are behind the funding of SCO to take a poke at IBM and slow the adoption of Linux through FUD. If you'd like to learn more about this incredibly complex case, GrokLaw is the place to visit. But be warned: it's easy to be dragged into all the fascinating nooks and crannies of the case.

The real question for me is whether MSFT and SUN succeeded in their ventures. SUN has done a turn-around and is re-inventing themselves as the green company with better price/power/performance for the internet. MSFT has… almost shipped Vista. Linux, meanwhile, has moved, up, out and around, scaling to greater multi-CPU architectures, developing a better virtualization story, making huge progress in hardware compatibility, and fielding several worthy desktop competitors. LAMP is not a risky choice for IT; it's a question of which commercially-supported distributions and stacks to choose and ensuring the eager technicians in house get the training they need. If the SCO case cooled enthusiasm and take-up any, it gave FOSS advocates time to get their act together and pay a little closer attention to governance and provenance and licensing terms, cleaning up their houses and getting their story straight. Meanwhile, Microsoft… almost shipped Vista.

If SCO/Baystar/Microsoft/SUN thought that IBM would roll over and settle out of court, they badly miscalculated.

Fonality acquires TrixBox

By on October 4, 2006 in Technology

Slashdot post: Fonality Acquires Trixbox. An anonymous reader writes “MySQL's Brian Aker has a good commentary on the big news in acquisitions today that Fonality has acquired Trixbox, the Linux Telephony distribution.” From the article: “So why is this big news? Trixbox is the distribution for telephony on Linux today. They have put together a vertical Linux distribution dedicated to telephony. It combines Asterisk with a web based interface backed by MySQL, integrated into the SugarCRM solution. As Redhat today is the LAMP of the IT Enterprise and Web Framework, (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP), Trixbox is the LAMP stack of the Telephony market, Linux , Asterisk, MySQL, Perl/PHP.”

Good news. I saw TrixBox (nee Asterisk @ Home) demonstrated at the MonadLUG group by Tim Lind, who's gone on to do a couple of very successful Asterisk installs, and it's on my “I'd really like to try that out if only I had more time” list.

Ubuntu print to PDF

By on October 3, 2006 in Linux, OpenSource

Working on a new install of Ubuntu 6.06 and needed the functionality of printing to PDF out of a variety of applications. OpenOffice.org has it built-in, but other apps don't. There's lots of support in Linux for PostScript as the preferred output format, but the magic of invoking pstopdf is magick to me. Enter cups-pdf, a printer driver that generates PDF files. Following the instructions here (especially the hint in comment 15), I was up and running and generating PDFs in ten minutes. Way cool!

DLSLUG, October 5th, 7 PM: Protecting a Windows Server with a $50 Linux Box from Staples

By on October 3, 2006 in Linux, Microsoft, OpenSource, Security

Bill McGonigle announces Thursday's Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Linux User Group: “Protecting a Windows Server with a $50 Linux Box from Staples” presented by Lloyd Kvam:

“Lloyd will talk about OpenWRT, the open source linux distribution that targets small routers such as the Linksys WRT45GL. He recently used one to make a bridging firewall, where a Windows computer needed protection, but there was no access to the router.”

“Lloyd will talk about hardware organization, installing packages, the layout of the default configuration, and how to customize the routing and firewall operations… Lloyd works at software development, preferably in Python.”

Should be a fun meeting. Hope to see you there!

CentraLUG: 2 October 2006 7 PM: Demos, Q&A, future topics

By on September 25, 2006 in Linux, OpenSource

The monthly meeting of CentraLUG, the Concord/Central NH GNHLUG chapter, happens the first Monday of the month on the New Hampshire Institute Campus starting at 7 PM. Directions and maps are available on the NHTI site at http://www.nhti.edu/welcome/directions.htm. This month, we'll be meeting in the Library/Learning Center/Bookstore, marked as “I” on the map at the link above. The main meeting starts at 7 PM and we finish around 9 PM. Open to the public. Tell your friends.

At this meeting we'll cover a couple of quick demos, including a tour of the GNHLUG wiki and a demo of the NX remote desktop access tool. We'll review upcoming meetings for GNHLUG and discuss what presentations we'd like to see this fall and winter. Over the summer we had a couple of good meetings and talked about learning a bit about software development on Linux. I'd like to open up the discussion to what these “users” are that we are supposed to be a group of, and what sort of presentations these “users” might like to see. Over the summer, I attended two “Open Mike” meetings, one in Nashua and one in Peterborough, that were very interesting and highly interactive. We'll certainly include some Q&A in this meeting, and perhaps include it as a permanent part of the meeting. MonadLUG has also added a “man page of the month” to their meetings; let's consider this as well.

7:00 Welcome, Announcements
7:15 Questions
7:30 Demos
8:00 Answers
8:30 Discussion: Future meetings

There's lots more information about CentraLUG and its parent organization GNHLUG at http://www.gnhlug.org.

IBM Publishes Linux Client Migration Cookbook, v.2

By on September 22, 2006 in Linux, OpenSource

From DesktopLinux.com: “IBM has published a final draft of its “Redbook” titled Linux Client Migration Cookbook, Version 2: A Practical Planning and Implementation Guide for Migrating to Desktop Linux. The 376-page book, which targets enterprises needing to begin an evaluation of desktop Linux, is available for free download. “

Ohio LinuxFest

By on September 14, 2006 in Linux, OpenSource

Linux.com has an article on an upcoming Ohio LinuxFest put on by their own corporation. There's a lot to be learned by reading what others have learned in putting on a conference…

Linux and open source software users in the Buckeye State who want to network with several hundred of their colleagues will get the chance when Ohio LinuxFest 2006 gets underway later this month. The one-day conference, to be held on Saturday, September 30, at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in downtown Columbus, features presentations, exhibits, an after-conference party, and a special appearance by some live penguins.

MerriLUG September 2006: File Carving at Home or Office

By on September 14, 2006 in OpenSource, Security

On the GNHLUG-Announce list, Jim Kuzdrall announces the Septempber MerriLUG meeting, “File Carving at Home or Office”

  • Who : Andy Bair, Winning Team, 2006 File Carving Challenge
  • What : Unscramble randomized data sectors or packets back to files
  • Where: Martha's Exchange
  • Day : Thur 21 September **Next Week**
  • Time : 6:00 PM for grub, 7:30 PM for discussion

    :: Overview

    Want to undelete some Linux disk files? Piece together fragments of a deleted file? Recover a Windows disk where both FATS are destroyed or missing? Extract files from a network capture? MerriLUG presents Andy Bair with a new and effective approach to file carving that could be used to accomplish these tasks.

    Andy Bair (and teammates Klayton Monroe and Jay Smith) won the 2006 File Carving Challenge. The winners developed new tools and techniques which accurately extracted files from a 50MB disk image of containing JPEG, ZIP, HTML, Text, and Microsoft Office files.

    Andy's talk will explain the contest, contest data sample, methodology, and tools. There will be examples and a question-answer
    session. You might want to build a script to automate his method for your purposes (or entice him to do so). Get contest information at http://www.dfrws.org/2006/challenge/. Get a preview of the team's methodology, updated results and additional information at
    http://www.korelogic.com/Resources/Projects/dfrws_challenge_2006/.

    >>> RSVP to Jim Kuzdrall for dinner to assure adequate seating. Driving directions

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