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Using A Virtual Learning Environment - Gary Day

openSIS is a free student information system that rivals costly commercial alternatives in looks, functionality and ease of use and administration. openSIS is the centerpiece of an evolving set of integrated open source education applications that support schools and districts. openSIS is a game changer and a new paradigm in administrative education software. Our founders have always said that if we can produce an open source package that is easy to use, looks great, has the same functionality as commercial alternatives and represents a TCO up to 75% less than comparable solutions, then the decision should be easy. - Gary Day

A survey of the Ubuntu Server community has been published showing that more organisations are relying on Ubuntu for "mission critical" tasks. The survey, carried out by Canonical, the commercial sponsor for Ubuntu, and RedMonk, an open source oriented market research organisation that makes all of its content freely available, breaks down the 6800 responses, from predominantly Ubuntu users, and analyses it by business size. - Gary Day

Open source is now recognized in institutions of higher education as a viable technology solution that provides superior value at a fraction of the cost of proprietary applications. That's a good thing—but that's not all it can do. Open source can be a transformative force in education. In particular, it can transform computer science curricula. Academic institutions that are consumers of open source need to reverse roles and shift gears to “preach what they practice” and place higher emphasis on integrating open source into the classroom. - Gary Day

VMware View Open Client is available under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 (LGPL v 2.1) and is accessible from http://code.google.com/p.... Some of the features included in this release support secure tunneling using SSL, two factor authentication with RSA SecurID, Novell SLETC Add-On RPM package and a full command line interface. Support for the source code distribution is available through the VMware View Open Client community at: http://code.google.com/p.... - Gary Day

Researchers at Durham University have modified a video game and turned it into a fire drill simulator. - Gary Day

Enterprise networks now have an alternative choice to Microsoft Active Directory (AD) servers, with the open source Samba project aiming for feature parity with the forthcoming release of version 4, according to Canberra-based Samba developer Andrew Bartlett. - Gary Day

In Part 2 of the Kernel Log's coverage of the major changes happening in the main development branch for the Linux kernel 2.6.29 release, we look at a major new addition to Linux's networking capability, WiMAX support. - Gary Day

In the near future, the "greenness" of a gadget will have a big influence on whether consumers will buy it, suggests research published as CES begins. - Gary Day

Scholars, advertisers and political activists see massive online social networks as a representation of social interactions that can be used to study the propagation of ideas, social bond dynamics and viral marketing, among others. But the linked structures of social networks do not reveal actual interactions among people. Scarcity of attention and the daily rhythms of life and work makes people default to interacting with those few that matter and that reciprocate their attention. A study of social interactions within Twitter reveals that the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the “declared” set of friends and followers. - Gary Day

Dave Golding Quits Smoking For MS Trust. - Gary Day

An couple of anonymous readers wrote in to let us know about a followup to last Wednesday's story of the teacher who didn't believe in free software. The Linux advocate who posted the original piece has cooled off and graciously apologized for going off half-cocked (even though the teacher had done the same), and provided a little more background which, while not excusing the teacher's ignorance, does make her actions somewhat more understandable. - Gary Day

"Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. ... This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older version of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them..." - Gary Day

A No-Fly Zone To Protect Linux From Patent Trolls - Legal Pad - Gary Day

Richard Millwoood: Moderating A Web 2.0 World - Gary Day

I'm pleased to announce that the Linux 2.6 kernel has been ported to Apple's iPhone platform, with support for the first and second generation iPhones as well as the first generation iPod touch. This is a rough first draft of the port, and many drivers are still missing, but it's enough that a real alternative operating system is running on the iPhone. - Gary Day

But what looks like a semi-interesting story about US employment practices is being used by some of the clueless as another way of bashing Windows Vista - Gary Day

Welcome to the future home of LIFE.com, the most amazing collection of professional photography on the Web: 10 million photos from the legendary archives of LIFE magazine and thousands more added every day. Whatever you want to look at, whether it happened an hour ago, a century ago, or any time in between, you'll be able to find it here quickly, easily, and for free. - Gary Day

The ARM processor foundry and Canonical, which sponsors Ubuntu, together want to port the Ubuntu Desktop Linux distribution to the ARM v7 architecture. The primary aim is to give a complete Linux interface to mobile internet devices (MIDs) and other mobile equipment fitted with Cortex A8 and A9 CPUs. ARM is promising that such devices could be "always online" and yet last much longer on one battery charge than comparable devices fitted with x86 CPUs. - Gary Day

VMware intends to virtualise operating systems on mobile phones using technology acquired from Trango Virtual Processors. It hopes that this will help handset vendors reduce development time. End users will also benefit from the technology by being able to run multiple profiles – such as one for personal use and one for work use – on the same mobile phone. - Gary Day

AMD AND REDHAT have just done the so called impossible, and demonstrated VM live migration across CPU architectures. Not only that, they have demonstrated it across CPU vendors, potentially commoditising server processors. Eeek! - Gary Day

A new umbrella organisation formed to represent Britain's entire music industry will today promise to deliver a five-year plan to plot a safer course for a sector that has been battered in the past decade. - Gary Day

Ubuntu 8.10, named Intrepid Ibex, is scheduled for release next week, so we figured it's time to run down the checklist of improvements, fixes, and enhancements since Hardy Heron came out earlier this year. - Gary Day

Though there wasn’t a lot of hacking, there was a LOT of discussion, and we covered a lot of ground. There were at least 7 Canonical folks there, so it was a bit of a mini-sprint and a nice opportunity to meet the team at the same time. We had great participation from a number of organisations and free spirits, there’s a widespread desire to see GNOME stay on the forefront of usability. - Gary Day

After the release of Linux 2.6.27, kernel developers are currently busily integrating patches for the next kernel version into the main development branch of Linux. This usually involves discarding some old code and adding new code though on balance, there are usually more new lines than old ones, making the kernel grow continually. - Gary Day

But today, we're making what might just be the most exciting announcement of all: we and our Open Handset Alliance partners have now released the source code for Android. There's a huge amount of code and content there, so head over to http://source.android.com/ for all the details. - Gary Day

Gone are the days when VMware virtualization was a pure consolidation play. Increasingly, IT managers bitten by the virtualization bug now host their most performance-intensive applications on ESX, arguing that the improved availability and manageability justify the cost and performance overhead of a VMware license. - Gary Day

An Oxford University economics lecture about the credit crunch is at the top of a global iTunes chart for education. - Gary Day

Down these mean streets a man must go, and if he's carrying a modern camcorder, then it's going to have USB 2.0, not FireWire. And that, in a nutshell, is why it's farewell, my lovely, to FireWire - according to no less an authority than Steve Jobs - Gary Day

Windows has had a long history, complicated by there being two completely separate product lines sharing the same name. The original Windows started off as a graphical shell on top of MS-DOS and ended up incorporating DOS as its boot-loader. The second line, originally called Windows NT, began as an offshoot of the IBM and Microsoft joint project to create OS/2. - Gary Day