A computer program does what you tell it to do, not what you want it to do. - Greer's Third Law

News Archive - August 2007

News Roundup

Saturday 18th August 2007

Category: News

A quick collection of links from the recent news:

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BBC iPlayer, Linux, China, Printers and Dolphins

Friday 3rd August 2007

Category: News

First of all, the Free Software Foundation, understandably annoyed by the BBC, plans a protest against the 'corrupt' organisation.

Next up is Linus' response to claims that kernel developers ignore the desktop - he claims "I've always considered the desktop to be the most important part". In the same conversation, we hear why CFS by Molnar rather than SD by Kolivas was chosen as the new Linux scheduler. Onto the laptop, and we find the ASUS Eee, a cheap machine aimed at similar markets to the OLPC.

Moving onto specific distributions, MEPIS has moved back to Debian as its base, after a flirt with Ubuntu. Apparently, this is due to a misunderstanding over how Dapper Drake was updated i.e. that it receives only security updates. Speaking of Debian, we have a post describing the release goals of Debian Lenny, which is still some way off.

More generally, FLOSS faces many threats. Clearly, one is Microsoft - and it has allegedly beaten Linux on China. Others argue that in-fighting is another problem, although it may be that such projects simply have their in-fighting visible to the public rather than behind closed company doors.

If you work in an office, then the nearest threat may be your printer, due to the various nasties they seem to spewing out.

Finally, we hear that dolphins really are very clever.

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