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Nokia 810 Fan Video

Amazon MP3 Music Downloads

Amazon MP3 Frequently Asked Questions
Which computer operating systems are compatible with Amazon MP3?

You can buy songs from any computer with a web browser capable of downloading files from the Internet. The MP3 files you purchase will download directly to your computer and are compatible with any system that can read the MP3 music format. The Amazon MP3 Downloader is a tiny application that is required for purchasing and downloading an entire album and is currently available for Mac and Windows operating systems. If you use Linux, you can currently buy individual songs. A Linux version of the Amazon MP3 Downloader is under development, and when released will allow entire album purchases. For more information, please visit the Amazon MP3 Downloader Help page.

Good news everyone.

** UPDATE **

I downloaded two songs using Linux. Works great!

You need a special utility to download an entire album, but that utility is not available for Linux (yet). Promised RSN.

Someone somewhere asked hadn't Amazon figured out how to create zip files yet. Possibly they don't want to count on users being able to deal with them and are rolling whatever file packaging they are going to do into a "foolproof" interface they supply. If that's all that's going on, it shouldn't take long. One less proprietary OS dependency for me (I've bought music through iTunes, but use Linux software to serve and play them).

Get with the program Apple! Don't become just another Microsoft mini-me! (Lock-in)

Schools across Japan may switch to Linux :: gyaku

Japan's public broadcaster NHK reported late last week that the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to introduce the open-source operating system Linux for use within classrooms across the country in the near future. According to an investigation conducted in the spring of last year, there are currently over 400,000 computers at schools in Japan running on either Windows 98 or Windows Me, systems no longer supported by the software manufacturer Microsoft. The prohibitive cost of replacing these machines with newer models, as well as the rising price of proprietary software, prompted school teachers and administrators to propose the possibility of switching to open-source software as an affordable alternative.

Dell to Linux users: Not so fast

Last Friday night, Dell posted a note on the IdeaStorm Web site saying it was listening to thousands of users who had posted messages asking for Linux on its machines by moving forward to certify three of its corporate hardware lines -- OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and Dell Precision workstations -- for use with Novell SUSE Linux.

The company said today that the note was just about certifying the hardware for being ready to work with Novell SUSE Linux, not an announcement that the computers would be loaded and sold with the operating system in the near future.

McKesson Offers Health Care Apps On Red Hat Linux - Technology News by InformationWeek

"McKesson Corp. is selling its clinical applications for doctors' offices and hospitals based on Red Hat's Enterprise Linux operating system, offering what McKesson says is a less-expensive alternative to non-open source platforms."

Ohio school district upgrades to Linux, saves $412K

"The Bexley, Ohio high school district reportedly is migrating all of its desktop computers running Windows ME to Linux, instead of to Windows XP. The move is expected to save taxpayers as much as $412,000 in licensing costs, according to an article in a local community newspaper."

Linux arrives on 50,000 Brazilian desktops

"Estimated monthly deployment is about 10,000 desktops, with 50,000 desktops already delivered, EnabledPeople, a Linux development company, said. The company did not indicate the total number of desktops that are to be deployed in the course of the project."

Get Linux Genuine Advantage. NOW!

Once you've installed Linux Genuine Advantage™, you'll want to register and send in your licensing fees to receive these important benefits:

* Your computer, which worked just fine before, will continue functioning normally!
* Our software which you just installed will not disable logins on your computer (as long as our license server keeps working properly)!
* It's totally awesome!
* We might not raise the yearly licensing fees in the future!

Nokia's Linux-Powered N800 Internet Tablet Sneaks Out Early

The unit also has two SD (Secure Digital) flash memory card slots, whereas the 770 only had a single RS-MMC (reduced size multimedia cards) slot. One of these slots is located as an internal slot under the back cover, and the other is located under the memory card cover on the front corner of the tablet. Both memory cards can be hot swapped in and out while the unit's powered up.

Santa come back, I need to make a few changes!

Talk about bad timing. I can can only imagine that they wouldn't have been able to meet demand anyway. While far from perfect, this machine looks, finally, like something that is usable without too many constraints (pretty much a basic requirement for a "general purpose" computing device wouldn't you say?)

Audi's new luxury cars engineered on Linux

For several years, German automobile manufacturer Audi AG, a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, has been steadily migrating its engineering systems over to Linux. The company hopes to finish the job in 2007 and have the bulk of its servers and workstations running 64-bit Linux by the end of the year.

Recently Audi, whose longstanding motto is "Vorsprung durch Technik" ("Progress through technology"), has been upgrading to 64-bit Linux in deploying its automotive CAE (Computer-Aided Engineering) servers, where simulation software is used in the design of casts, frames, and components, as well as for crash-test simulations and other 3-D visualization problems, as part of the greater migration to Linux.

"2003 and 2004 saw an explosion in the use of x86 systems using Linux," says Audi spokesman Florian Kienast. "These systems are now being replaced by x86_64-based systems."

Kienast says that most CAE applications that the company uses perform well on the x86_64 architecture. "The systems have enough memory and I/O bandwidth to cope with the requirements of the applications," he says. "The notable exceptions are MSC Nastran and ABAQUS -- these products are extremely power-hungry. Here, the large cache available on the Itanium 2 has proved to be extremely valuable."

The move to Linux is occurring not only on the server side; the company is using Linux for workstations, too.

Yellow Dog Linux 5.0 for PS3 now available for free -- how is it?

Engadget demonstrates cluelessness:

what have your experiences been like with the Dog? Has it been worth your while? We're still holding out until Ubuntu gives us the love we crave.

Hey!

Why don't you just go run out and get an XBox instead? Or wait for Windows on the Wii? A whole new generation of technical wusses is out there waiting for everything to be handed to them on a silver platter.

Librarians stake their future on open source

"Our Sirsi system ran on a great big Sun server that was quite expensive. We poured a lot of money into that over the years to continue to upgrade it, plus the housing of it was very expensive. [Evergreen] runs on a Linux cluster, which is a lot less expensive. Also, we're not paying licensing fees anymore. When you're talking 252 libraries, which is what we are today, that's the great big savings."

According to a study that PINES conducted in 2002, Walker says that if all of their libraries would have to buy a new system, it would cost more than $15 million dollars, plus about $5 million dollars a year for maintenance. They run PINES for a lean $1.6 million a year.

PS3 based super-computing cluster on Linux

Overall, they conclude that the next generation cell product needs minor hardware change to scale efficiently for double precision work, but that the first generation is already between 3 and 60 times faster, and between 10 and 200 times more power efficient, than its competitors - numbers to keep in mind when you think about Apple's triumph in arranging to get dual core Xeon CPUs from Intel for only slightly more than than four times the $89 Sony is estimated to pay for an 8+1 cell at 3.2Ghz.

Trolltech rolls "complete" Linux smartphone stack

"European and U.S. vendors are also just more conservative about adopting new handsets," Nord continued. "Here in Silicon Valley, I see handsets advertised by carriers as 'new' that I saw two years ago, in Asia. But, I believe Motorola has announced that it will now begin to roll out its Linux phones in the U.S. and in Europe."

Novell bridges gap between .Net and Linux

"With this release, we have solved an important issue by making it easier to translate the Microsoft user interfaces to Linux, an important contribution in increasing the number of client-side Linux applications," said Miguel de Icaza, vice president of developer platforms at Novell and maintainer of the Mono project.

Let me know when the first one is out.

(I think this is a good idea, I'm just skeptical about the degree of cooperation Linux will get from Microsoft)

Munich Linux scales desktop management

LiMux developers have automated installation via Debian's FAI (fully automatic installation) system, according to McIntyre, with configuration information stored in LDAP and the database administration program GOsa as a front-end. "They've integrated these to enable some very clever management features so that all aspects of the city-wide system can be maintained from one central point," McIntyre said.

As new machines are introduced to the system, administrators can choose to configure them as clients or "depot" servers, used as seeds for further clients, McIntyre said. Individual user profiles can be adjusted to, for instance, give access to new applications as needed.

Shared resources such as network storage and printers are set up automatically from the LDAP database, and the system can control access to USB storage devices on a per-device, per-user basis, for security purposes.

LightScribe Labeler For Linux Allows Users To Burn Customized Images On To LightScribe Discs

LaCie LightScribe Labeler for Linux is simple and intuitive, allowing users to burn customized images on to LightScribe discs in three easy steps: import, resize, print. K3b Founder Sebastian Trueg said, "We're happy to see that LaCie is developing tools for Linux users, and are pleased to work with them to make it happen. With the LaCie LightScribe Labeler for Linux, K3b users now have access to the latest disc-labeling technology from LightScribe, and a complete burning solution thanks to LaCie."

Linux desktop driver woes: Laying blame, lobbying, coping

Generally, the bestselling, mainstream PC peripherals now support Linux. "I don't expect Linux to support the odder peripherals I use such as slide scanners, VoIP phones," said Seager. "I install Linux on machines with relatively standard components."

Finally, good IT practices will take away most driver hassles and open the door to Linux desktop adoption, our sources say. Test and retest before making changes, stick to your specs when buying hardware and make sure your vendors respect and support your decision to use Linux desktops.

Nvidia rooted by Linux graphics bug

Nvidia supplied two graphic drivers for Linux - a closed source "binary blob" driver, which is subject to the vulnerability, and an open source driver, which is not subject to the bug. However, the open source driver lacks the acceleration features found in the closed source driver.

HEY! I gotta idea. Lets take out all those wasteful range and error checks and make this baby fly!