Linux Community Magazine

Google holds back Android Honeycomb; Asus releases the source code

GPS, Or Why Men STILL Won't Ask for Directions...

New KDE project aims at tablets, mixed UIs

How To Configure PureFTPd To Accept TLS Sessions On CentOS 5.5

Ubuntu Unity vs. GNOME 3: Which is Better?

Knoppix 2011 6.4 Review

The Major Open-Source ATI Improvements Over Two Years

VMware Launches Open Source Cloud Foundry

Turnkey Linux Uses Ubuntu as a Foundation

Wine 1.2.3 update fixes bugs

View the original article here

[ Thanks to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for this link. ]

"Believe it or not, OpenStack, the extremely popular open-source software cloud stack is just over six-months old. Someone new to cloud-computing might find that hard to believe since today, February 3rd, Cisco, the 800-pound gorilla of networking, and Canonical, parent of Ubuntu Linux, have both joined forces with OpenStack.

"Historically, Canonical has been allied with the other popular open-source cloud stack, Eucalyptus since it began working in clouds. Indeed, Canonical, in partnership with Dell, has just launched a private cloud server package using the Eucalyptus cloud platform.

"Be that as it may, Canonical?s Cloud Solutions Lead, Nick Barcet, announced that Canonical was including the latest OpenStack software release, Bexar ?in the repositories for Ubuntu 11.04 as well as officially joining the community."

Complete Story

Related Stories:
OpenStack Expands with Glance, Ubuntu and Cisco(Feb 04, 2011)
Technology hero(Feb 02, 2011)
Rackspace's CEO on Open Source and OpenStack(Jan 19, 2011)
Mark Shuttleworth on UEC and OpenStack(Jan 12, 2011)
NASA Tech Gets Open Source Apache Blessing(Jan 10, 2011)

View the original article here

CyanogenMOD CM7: Teach your old Droid New Tricks

Building A Central Loghost On CentOS And RHEL 5 With rsyslog

Scribus: Manipulate and Place Objects in a Layout

Control Your Network Traffic with Wondershaper in Ubuntu/ Debian Linux

Rackspace's CEO on Open Source and OpenStack

More Deep Discovery on your Linux Server With /proc

GNOME Accessibility Application Ocra 2.91.5 Released

Mandriva Provides an Educational Solution for Schools and OEMs

Linux 2.6.38 eliminates last main global lock, improving performance

Midori vs Epiphany Review

View the original article here

Official Nagios Training Schedule January 2011

Why Linux is Alpha and Omega

Detecting net neutrality violations?there's an app for that!

Ubuntu?s Cloud-Init Promotes Customization in the Cloud

Motorola Takes Wraps Off Xoom Android Tablet

What the WWF has to learn about FOSS

Introduction to RAID

Virtualization With KVM On An OpenSUSE 11.3 Server

CA Court Rules Smartphones Can Be Searched Without A Warrant

Switching to Linux (For the Right Reasons)

View the original article here

Cloud computing is the hot buzz phrase. But as both Shawn powers and I have no new technology, or even a new implementation of new technology computing cloud is highlighted.  But that doesn't mean that it is well understood, either by those who design or are the ones who yells it, then follow the yellow brick road (or the latest edition of PC week).  As several anonymous (and not so anonymous) commentators have said, it is only hardware, some good data links and some intelligent coding much more to cloud computing.

Because cloud computing means different things to different people (and at different times of the day), we must be on our terms and conditions clearly.  Our friends at Wikipedia define cloud computing as:

Cloud computing Internet-based computing, with shared servers provide resources, software and data to computers and other devices on demand...

This definition works well enough for me, so let us examine it a little deeper.  By definition everything Internet based tends not to have associated with a physical or geographical location.  For example, when I go the Linux Journal website, I'm not thinking about, Houston, Texas, where the magazine officially.  In fact, because actually Houston I think a few of us life, at the Linux Journal page as not everywhere.  This is further underlined by the variety of comments from around the world to our musings.

Also, if you are a Googlesuche, an example of cloud computing, you are more likely to the beat to one server cluster is (IP-based), data center than locally on your physical location when they are, will occur to your servers in California (and I assume server in a data center in California you).  Two examples - search yields and generic Web sites talking - pretty harmless data.  It does not really where the servers are located, and there are no large crushing legal issues in reference to.

But if, for example, the Federal Government (we use the US one since that's where I am, but any Federal Government has the same set of questions) or more importantly, your company, decide, is it on cloud computing, then you can go as IT professionals we must not only part of the process, but we need questions, the tough questions at the beginning, not the day before the switch is thrown.

Cloud computing matters location.  And also property.  Lawyers must be included.  And much careful planning.  Here are some things to note: who owns the cloud, you're going to use?  Are contracting with a third party for storage or build it from scratch.  If local law enforcement show up with an application, the sophisticated data pass, who is responsible for turning this data?  When?  Under the laws of the State (or country)?  Who owns the data paths?  Is traffic shaping? How does it all nodes in the cloud?  If you work for an international company, response is to say Singapore? Answer it in Virginia or the United Kingdom identical his target?  Who is he that is responsible.  Can uploaded data (the same in different countries or be downloaded)? (If you think the answer is Yes, you must be really secure and your data view.)  (There are a lot of things that cannot be exported.)  Is's your data-sharing disk with someone data?  There is a chance that someone else, your data with (or without) your knowledge and exposure data, when this happens?  And then there are the usual kind of service level agreement questions regarding access, up time, backup and recovery, password, password recovery, management statistics and the other daily minutia, you need it most to keep running.

Behind the cloud is still only computer - not the big and all powerful Oz-(Daten,_Datenverbindungen_und_uns_IT_Profis) but it is certainly much more, that you must consider before you there.

View the original article here

Cloud computing is not only the latest buzz word, it is well possible model of computing, also the 21st century. However, it is easy to forget even a relatively new approach is personal computing in which each user has a stand-alone system that can operate network.

The first practical computer from huge Giants consisting of clicking relays and vacuum tubes. Much of that early development of this multimedia mark had Monster efforts been spurred on by the Allied code breaking during the second WELTKRIEGS. For the first thirty years of history of the general purpose computer was the exclusive privilege of computer time, large institutions and Governments.

One of the first breakthroughs in lower costs for computer access was the concept of a time-sharing system. In such a system, multiple operators can access resources on the computer through the use of remote terminals. Here, in the form of early teletype terminals, and later, video terminals we see the emergence of a network topology where computing horsepower in a central computer of the user is located.

It was the epoch of the mainframe and the dumb terminal. Usually ability would be missing these dumb terminals storage or calculation, as they were simply a display with a keyboard. From the 1970s (usually issued, wearing shorts when books I've seen are correct), an operator shielded terminal would sit before a yellow or green grateful that he no longer needed to wait in line to hand in a box carefully arranged punch cards.

Fast forward to the late 70's and a new paradigm was beginning to win. If you, the Pirates of Silicon film seen Valley, a dramatization of the early years of Apple computers, you can remember a scene in which the young Steve Wozniak is forced to show his prototype PC to his employer, Hewlett Packard. In the scene that I about Steve speak fears that his idea he takes his bosses. The Exchange goes something like:

HP exec
Steve it is Steve isn't it?

Steve Wozniak
(NODS)

HP exec
Steve, you say that this... Gadget... you is for ordinary people. What would want on Earth the ordinary people with computers?

(long pause)

The idea is to the debate has been was a personal computer, i.e. a stand-alone computers on which an electrical power supply needs to function. Singular to computers that do not need a larger computers are connected to run went on the popular face of computing for the rest of the twentieth century to be.

Since its inception, suffered a minor the personal computer, organized attack by companies, which had begun calling Terminal thin clients. These companies such as Oracle and Sun, met limited success in the course of the 1990s. However, sometimes a good technological idea comes, but suffers, because it arrived at the wrong time. Consider, for example, Apple's first attempt at a hand held the ARM powered computer, Newton equipped touch screen. People blame Apple simply existing ideas in the form of the iPad repackaging, but were kept pioneers in hand computing 15 years ago.

The latest incarnation of the general idea of separation of memory and computing power of the user's access point is called cloud computing. Cloud computing probably to a certain extent will be successful because it benefits there are natural power of the most powerful but mundane: evolution. The computing environment has changed and people have decided that want computing has to offer cloud you. What's more, you are ready, some of the benefits of true giving up personal computers to get it. It will take a while, but already, people are starting to realize the benefits of cloud style solution like Google mail and Google Docs.

So take my advice: in a few years when a young, hip child tells you about the new idea in computing, self catering computers with local memory and computing power have, try, surprised look.

Writer Michael Reed free http://www.unmusic.co.uk/ technology, retro computing, geek culture and gender politics writes headquartered in the UK. His byline has appeared in several technology publications.

View the original article here

Why and How I Join the Cloud Hype, and So Can You, Free Culture Amigos!
Dec 4, 2010, 23 :02 UTC (1 Talkback[s]) (1510 reads)
(Other stories by HUNG Chao-Kuei)

[ Thanks to Chao-Kuei Hung for this link. ]

"For those of us who have been using GNU/Linux, full-steam cloud computing began with ssh -X or VNC long time ago. For those of us who have contributed to Wikipedia or OpenClipArt or OpenStreetMap, the real benefit of cloud computing lies in the web 2.0 / read-write / prosumer / Pro-Am culture that emphasizes transparency, democracy, freedom of speech, collaboration, etc. Yet recent hypes smelling suspiciously of excessive commercial interest seem to mislead the general public away from the true values of cloud computing and into expensive software products that might lock in users. Lacking an exact and precise source of confusion to debunk the hype, I suggest that fellow advocates of the free culture movement jump on the cloud bandwagon and compete with the hype generator(s?) for the seat behind the steering wheel, popularizing the free culture concepts during the competition, as a peaceful way of fighting the cloud hypes.

"In response to readers' suggestion to look at the cloud hype, I first wrote in May about Microsoft and Taiwan government's collaboration to invest 2.4*10^10 NT dollars smelling badly of corporate greed exploiting public ignorance while feeding on government resources. Seeing that the hype in Taiwan grows stronger and stronger each day, I wrote two blog articles in Chinese ( SaaS and PaaS history) and received some attention. Then I pasted the blog articles into a paper (Chinese) and presented it in one of the many academic cloud conferences. Later Carla Schroder of LinuxToday wrote a piece Keep Your Cloud, I'm a Customer Not a Consumer and I realized that the extensive hype is not limited to Taiwan alone. So I decided that the paper is worth translating into English (with slight modifications), as: "A Brief History of Cloud Computing (Before the Commercial Hype) and Purchasing Suggestions"."

Complete Story

Related Stories:
Censorship of the Internet Takes Center Stage in "Online Infringement" Bill(Sep 23, 2010)
More Than 60 Schools in Kaohsiung City Signed the Software Freedom Manifesto(Sep 15, 2010)
DRM and Other Forces Overriding the Three Laws of Robotics(Aug 04, 2010)
Human Rights Eroding in the Name of Copyright Protection(Jun 09, 2010)
Wiki As an Example to Demystify Cloud Computing(May 28, 2010)
The Likely Victims of This Year's BSA raid: Internet Cafe's and Other Computer(Jan 20, 2010)
Mandatory Use of Open Standards In Hungary(Dec 24, 2009)

View the original article here