Embedded Alley, a leading provider of embedded Linux solutions, today announced that Ken Keller was joining the firm as vice president of engineering.

But if we are to understand metastasis, then we know it’s the spread of cancer throughout the host. Ballmer had no idea how right he was to use this term. Unrelenting, untiring, unstoppable and destructive. Fortunately, the only thing being harmed by this metastasis is Microsoft’s business model. I’m going to share with you bits and pieces of an amazing three day period. Let me show you “metastasis”.

Mainstream Linux distributions typically default to one of two desktop environments, KDE or GNOME. Both of these environments provide users with an intuitive and attractive desktop, as well as offering a large raft of multimedia software, games, administration programs, network tools, educational applications, utilities, artwork, web development tools and more. However, these two desktops focus more on providing users with a modern computing environment with all the bells and whistles featured in Windows Vista, rather than minimising the amount of system resources they need.

“A lot of the past discussions on this site involved the question of idea ownership, mostly as part of the overall discourse on Free Software. I’ve usually been the one to state that ideas cannot be owned or at the very least fall under some sort of collective ownership. Today, however, I believe I was wrong. Not only do I no longer believe in collective ownership, but I do believe that ideas can and are being owned as good old fashioned private property.”

OpenSSH version 4.3 introduced a new feature: the ability to create on-the-fly “Virtual Private Networks” via the tunnel driver (the so-called “tun” driver). This allows you to create a network interface that bridges two physically disparate network segments in different locations. This article explains how to use SSH to set up SSH-based point to point connections with OpenSuse 11.0 which can then be used to create routes that create virtual private networks.

LXer Feature: 30-Nov-2008

Early in the week there was an article about some deadly Linux commands and I have to admit I personally wouldn’t try any of them, except on a ‘practice’ machine maybe. In another article we have a nice list of advanced Linux distributions to try out. But it did not list Linux From Scratch which I know technically not a “distro” (it’s a book about building one) but still, any list of “advanced” distributions has include LFS doesn’t it?

There are network subnets that have been taken over by Spammers and run by bots. These networks are recorded and documented by Spamhaus and provide you a quick way to modify your firewall to eliminate these know blocks of Spam. You will need to have an iptables firewall and add this section to the firewall which will use the information found in the list to drop the subnets thus taking the load off your Postfix mail server.

In the future, you will be able to surf the Internet, hands-free, by using your voice, according to the third annual “IBM Next Five in Five” – a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years. The list predicts that new technology will change how people create, build and interact with information and e-commerce websites – using speech instead of text.

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Veejay is a visual instrument and real-time video
sampler. It allows you to “play” the video like
you would play a piano. While playing, you can
record the resulting video directly to disk (video
sampling). Veejay can be operated live by using
the keyboard (which is completely user definable)
or remotely over TCP/IP. Veejay can be used to
manipulate video in a realtime environment such as
visual performances or for (automated) interactive
video installations.

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License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

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Changes:
Easier to compile; several dependencies have been dropped (Unicap, MJPEG Tools, and GtkCairo). Faster capturing (EffecTV’s v4lutils) instead of Unicap. A command line switch to swap YUV range [0..255] <-> [16..235] on input video files. Better slow motion: interpolation of the first/last frame according to loop direction. A skin for 1024×768 reloaded has been added.

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JOpt.SDK is an automated vehicle routing and dispatching component for both Java/J2SE and .NET. It can solve Travelling Salesman Problems (TSP) and Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problems with Time Windows (CVRP,VRPTW). It offers route and transport optimisation with respect to various constraints such as time windows, load capacities, and prescribed itinerary. The component is based on genetic algorithms, and automatically determines an optimized allocation of vehicels to an arbitrary set of orders.

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License: Other/Proprietary License

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Changes:
The assisted mode has become the default case. The algorithm has been improved to address a broad range of problem types, and the optimization now always starts with a construction algorithm to create initial solutions. After that, the initial solution is subsequently improved by a second algorithm. Timewindow support has been added to the mixed fleet construction algorithm.