Meeting the President of Brazil at FISL 10

FISL 10.0 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, included a visit from a special guest.

FISL 10.0 in Porto Alegre, Brazil was the best yet, for many reasons. For a long time I have been impressed with how the FISL organizers (most, if not all of which are volunteers) have brought together government, industry and the community to put on an ever-larger and more complex event.

Patents, Protests, Plebiscites, and Protecting your freedom

Lunch with Richard Stallman

When he attended a rally in Munich this month, Richard Stallman took time out of his busy schedule to talk with our News Editor, Britta Wülfing. The conversation covered everything from Software as a Service, to patents, protests, international politics, and protecting your freedom.

SXSW Interactive Report

Action in Austin

The South by Southwest Interactive conference purports to showcase the best minds and brightest personalities in emerging technology. The Interactive portion of this year's event took place from March 12-16 in Austin, Texas. The entire SXSW festival is composed of Interactive, Film, and Music conferences and turns the city of Austin into one large media fest.

Book Review: Head First Web Design

Curt Shontz cracks open O'Reilly's Head First Web Design

Great designers understand far more about building web sites than just generating markup and style rules. They know that organization, layout, color scheme, and even writing style are fundamental to creating a successful web presence. Head First Web Design treats each of these subjects and dozens of others with thoroughness and flair.

SCALE 7x: DOHCS Conference

A report from the Demonstrating Open Source Healthcare Solution Conference

Self-contained pre-conferences marked day zero at the seventh annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE), including the Women In Open Source (WIOS) conference, Open Source Software In Education (OSSIE), a Fedora activity day, two training tracks, and a Zenoss community day. One mini-conference grew large enough to spin off as a self-contained entity: the Demonstrating Open Source Healthcare Solution (DOHCS) conference, now in its third year, examined the comparatively low-profile work undertaken in the medical field.

Event Report: SCALE 7x

A look back at the seventh annual Southern California Linux Expo

The seventh annual Southern California Linux Expo, held February 20-22, included a wide variety of talks on open source projects, system administration, and software development from luminaries in the open source community. This year’s conference was larger than ever and included keynotes from Bradley Kuhn, President of Software Freedom Conservancy, and Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier, openSUSE's Community Manager. Kuhn talked about concerns with Software as a Service (a.k.a. the cloud), and Brockmeier discussed ways to improve the reach of an open source project.

Learning FreeNAS

Chapter 2: Preparing to Add FreeNAS to Your Network

Configure and manage a network attached storage solution

• Turn a PC into a Network Attached Storage server with FreeNAS
• Configure, manage, and troubleshoot your FreeNAS installation
• Up to date with the latest FreeNAS release
• Includes a comprehensive troubleshooting section

Network Administration with FreeBSD 7

Chapter 11: Network Configuration—IPv6

Building, securing, and maintaining networks with the FreeBSD operating system

• Set up and manage networking on FreeBSD
• Virtualization with FreeBSD Jails, IPFW and PF
• Configure interfaces, protocols, and routing

Expert Python Programming

Chapter 10: Documenting Your Project

Best practices for designing, coding, and distributing your Python software

• Learn Python development best practices from an expert, with detailed coverage of naming and coding conventions
• Apply object-oriented principles, design patterns, and advanced syntax tricks
• Manage your code with distributed version control
• Profile and optimize your code
• Proactive test-driven development and continuous integration

Five Reasons to Make Friends with Puppy

Why you should give this Puppy a closer look

By now, you might have noticed that I'm a big fan of Puppy Linux. It is the distro I'm running on my workhorse ASUS Eee PC 701 4G netbook, and it helps me to stay productive not only in airports, cafés, and hotel rooms but also at home. But if you are still undecided whether you should give Puppy Linux a try, here are five reasons why this little gem deserves a closer look.