News (178)

OLPC giveaway program hits Oz

The Australian subsidiary of the non-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organisation is about to commence a "Give 1, Get 1" program on November 30 that deliver the machines to both geeks and disadvantaged children. Read more »

BrowserPlus escapes Yahoo walled garden

Yahoo has improved its BrowserPlus technology for more sophisticated Web applications and now lets other Web sites besides its own use it, the company said. Read more »

Touching Windows 7

Along with the gestures themselves, Microsoft has tweaked the desktop to support touch, doing things like spreading out menu lists to make the operating system easier to navigate with just a finger. Read more »

OLPC: Windows vs. Linux

On the outside, the Windows version of the XO laptop looks just like the Linux model. But simply booting up the device shows that the Windows version bears little resemblance to the original One Laptop Per Child device. Read more »

NSW to censor student laptops

The NSW Department of Education and Training (DET) plans to limit internet access on the laptops given to NSW's senior students under the "digital education revolution" to a pre-approved list of websites. Read more »

Keystrokes can be recovered remotely

Wired keyboards, like those found on desktop PCs, emit electromagnetic waves that can be read remotely, according two Swiss researchers. Read more »

Google's Gears gives laptops location smarts

Google has updated its open source Gears project so Web sites can take advantage of location services in Gears-enabled Web browsers. Read more »

Linux 'teething problems' affect netbook returns

The return rate on Linux-powered netbooks may be higher than that for Windows netbooks, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing for Linux, according to Linux vendor Canonical. Read more »

Mitnick cleared after customs scare

Since being released from prison eight years ago, Kevin Mitnick's brushes with the law have consisted of a few parking tickets and a citation for driving without a front license plate - that is, until he returned from a trip to Colombia two weeks ago. Read more »

OLPC rivals get 'vicious'

When the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organisation first mooted the idea of a super low cost laptop aimed at schoolchildren in the developing world some years ago, it was arguably on its own in the market. Read more »

Features (61)

10 questions to ask before migrating to Linux

If you're thinking about making the switch to Linux, Jack Wallen is all for it -- but only if you approach the migration with your eyes open. He recommends that you evaluate a number of key issues before taking this big step. Read more »

Five ways to make meetings bearable

More annoying than even junk mail is the dreaded Outlook meeting invite. Find out how to make meetings more bearable. Read more »

Brazil's love of Linux

Walk into the Ponto Frio electronics store at Sao Paulo, Brazil, which proudly displays a penguin-shaped logo, and you will find a healthy supply of Linux PCs alongside the usual Windows machines. Read more »

Getting to grips with parallelism

Although parallelism may be a new concept for many programmers, there are some for whom the concept is a part of their daily responsibilities. Read more »

Hacking with no technology

The typical image of a hacker is a kid hunched over his keyboard in the wee hours of the night staring at commands on his computer screen that unlock the secrets of the national government. But the woman sitting next to you at Starbucks fiddling with her digital camera could be just as dangerous. Read more »

Query Active Directory for empty computer account descriptions

It's very handy to populate the Windows Active Directory Description field for computer accounts. Organisationally, you may use the field as an indicator for the system's role. Read more »

Ecosystem breaking from Microsoft's grip?

Microsoft got where it is today through its influence over manufacturers. It no longer has the control it once enjoyed. Read more »

Remaking my server environment: blade servers, virtualisation, terminal computing

My staff and I will be making some relatively significant changes to the computing environment at Westminster College. I thought I'd use this post to describe what we're doing and why and maybe give you some ideas about your own workings. Read more »

Authentication caching with nscd

Distributed authentication is increasingly popular as home networks add more computers and business networks continue to expand. Using a central authentication system such as LDAP or NIS with other technologies like Kerberos has become somewhat of a standard in large networks. Read more »

Learn to use a serial console on Linux

Using a serial console on Linux is much like using a modem; the technology is virtually identical, but instead of using a modem to dial into a remote system, a special serial cable, called a null-modem cable, is strung between two computers via their serial ports. Read more »

Video (4)

What if every child had a laptop?

From the '60 Minutes' archive: Lesley Stahl talks with MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the non-profit One Laptop Per Child. (Originally aired in US on May 20, 2007) Read more »

Is Windows 7 Vista all over again?

Although Windows 7 is still months away from a public release, word on the street is that Microsoft's new OS is only marginally different from Vista. CNET senior writer Ina Fried got her hands on a prebeta laptop with Windows 7 and shares her first impressions with Kara Tsuboi on this edition of the Daily Debrief. Read more »

One Windows Laptop per Child

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Is desktop security broken beyond repair?

At the AusCERT 2007 conference in Queensland last week, keynote speaker Ivan Krstic, who is the director of security architecture for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, told attendees that desktop security was fundamentally broken. We asked several security experts who attended the conference if they agreed and how the problem could be fixed. Read more »

Blog (26)

Google faces down Apple

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- What's the point in following Apple's rules on the iPhone SDK if other developers will just flaunt them? We check the answer out and cover the other issues from the week: OLPC, IE, Ballmer and the Internet in space. Read more »

BarCamp buzz: Let the hacking continue

[blogs:bootstrappr] -- Attending last weekend's BarCamp in Sydney, it was hard to escape the conclusion that a certain "dot-com bust" flavour had seeped into the kool aid previously being drunk by Australia's web 2.0 and early stage start-up sector. Read more »

The good and truly awful celluloid depictions of computers

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- Ever wonder why your lawyer uncle leaves the room whenever you turn over to Boston Legal? Or why your forensic science cousin can't stand crime drama? You know the answer: it’s the horrid trivialisation and dumbing down of an occupation to make it appear entertaining. Sometimes it is so unbelievable that it actually hurts and yelling at the screen is the only outlet. Read more »

Shadow chasing in browsers

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- The punching and counterpunching continued in the ongoing web browser development bout. Each time one browser closes a feature gap, a new feature appears in one of the others -- how we ever put up with the years of browser stagnation, I'll never know. Read more »

Targeted for hacking by reporters at my table

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- I should have known it was only a matter of time. I've been covering security conferences on and off for about 14 years and considered myself lucky not to have been hacked, that I knew of. Until Thursday. Read more »

XO to run XP

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- When Bill Gates says that everything in the world should be a computer, what he means is that everything in the world should be running Windows. Read more »

Quick Tip: Forwarding X11 to OS X

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- Just because you are on a Mac doesn't mean you can't run your Linux applications. Here's how you can bring penguin power to your Mac. Read more »

Melbourne clichés: Things of stone and code

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- It's fair to say that the weather in Melbourne has changed as often as speaker's laptops have failed -- and I'd expect nothing less. Read more »

Unlocking the Wii's hidden potential

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- In a collection of videos, notable for their lucid explanations, Johnny Lee, a Ph.D. graduate student from CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute shows exactly how versatile the "Wiimote" system can be Read more »

Web continues to stagnate

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- If you are in the Internet Explorer development team, you are faced with a conundrum -- the choice is either break the Web or give standards compatibility a lower priority. Read more »

Others (1)

LCA Open Day

Yesterday was show and tell day for linux.conf.au with a pavilion full of gadgets, toys and cool stuff Read more »

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