Cody Taylor

waderoush writes “Nothing like the open source computing movement has ever caught fire in biology or pharmaceuticals, where intellectual property is king. But drawing inspiration from the people who make Linux software, and the social networking success of Facebook, Merck’s cancer research leader has nailed down million to launch a nonprofit biology platform called Sage, which aims to make it easier for researchers around the world to pool their data to make better drugs. ‘We see this becoming like the Google of biological science. It will be such an informative platform, you won’t be able to make decisions without it,’ says Merck’s Eric Schadt, a co-founder of Sage. He adds: ‘We want this to be like the Internet. Nobody owns it.'”

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Engadget is reporting that a new “Touch Book” being previewed at DEMO ’09 in California by the company “Always Innovating” promises a new take on mobile computing devices. Touting 10 to 15 hours of battery life, this ARM-powered netbook weighs less than two pounds, but the true magic comes with the detachable screen that can function as a completely stand-alone touchscreen tablet. The machine is currently running a Linux OS with a touchable 3D UI, the entire screen is magnetic for mounting on a metal surface, and the whole package is being projected for less than 0.

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supaneko writes “I am working with a non-profit that will eventually host a massive online self-help archive and community (using FTP and HTTP services). We are expecting 1,000+ unique visitors / day. I know that having only one server to serve this number of people is not a great idea, so I began to look into clusters. After a bit of reading I determined that I am looking for high availability, in case of hardware fault, and network load balancing, which will allow the load to be shared among the two to six servers that we hope to purchase. What I have not been able to determine is the ‘perfect’ solution that would offer efficiency, ease-of-use, simple maintenance, enjoyable performance, and a notably better experience when compared to other setups. Reading about Windows 2003 Clustering makes the whole process sounds easy, while Linux and FreeBSD just seem overly complicated. But is this truly the case? What have you all done for clustering solutions that worked out well? What key features should I be aware for successful cluster setup (hubs, wiring, hardware, software, same servers across the board, etc.)?”

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jammag writes “Open source advocate Bruce Perens takes a close look at Microsoft’s lawsuit against TomTom (discussed here last week), which involves an implementation of the Linux kernel, and calls it essentially a paper tiger. He notes: ‘the technologies claimed in the 8 patents involved are so old and obvious that it’s fair to say they have a high “Duh!” factor. There’s an anti-trust angle to this suit that could blow up in Microsoft’s face. And there’s a high probability that some or all of the patents involved are invalid, due to recent court decisions.’ Although the legal expense for TomTom to defend itself in court could be astronomical — meaning they may be forced to settle — in Perens’ view Microsoft is aware its case is weak, yet hopes for a PR victory at limited cost.” And reader nerdyH adds speculation from Open Innovation Network CEO Keith Bergelt that Redmond’s action could be retaliation for TomTom’s spurning a Microsoft acquisition bid in 2006.

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What separates average Linux users from the super-geeks? Simple: years spent learning the kinds of hacks, tricks, tips and techniques that turn long jobs into a moment’s work. If you want to get up to speed without having to put in all that leg-work, we’ve rounded up over 50 easy-to-learn Linux tips to help you work smarter!

chthonicdaemon writes “I have been using Linux as my primary environment for more than ten years. In this time, I have absorbed all the lore surrounding the Unix Way — small programs doing one thing well, communicating via text and all that. I have found the command line a productive environment for doing many of the things I often do, and I find myself writing lots of small scripts that do one thing, then piping them together to do other things. While I was spending the time learning grep, sed, awk, python and many other more esoteric languages, the world moved on to application-based programming, where the paradigm seems to be to add features to one program written in one language. I have traditionally associated this with Windows or MacOS, but it is happening with Linux as well. Environments have little or no support for multi-language projects — you choose a language, open a project and get it done. Recent trends in more targeted build environments like cmake or ant are understandably focusing on automatic dependency generation and cross-platform support, unfortunately making it more difficult to grow a custom build process for a multi-language project organically. All this is a bit painful for me, as I know how much is gained by using a targeted language for a particular problem. Now the question: Should I suck it up and learn to do all my programming in C++/Java/(insert other well-supported, popular language here) and unlearn ten years of philosophy, or is there hope for the multi-language development process?”

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With news that users are hacking Windows and Linux Netbooks to run OS X–and run it pretty well–Apple needs to release a Netbook of its own before it loses ground in the highest-growth laptop category.

CWmike writes to tell us that Sun’s Scott McNealy is pushing for the Obama administration to adopt a much more open-source friendly policy similar to what has been done in Denmark, the UK, and other countries. “Although open-source platforms are widely used today in the federal government — particularly Linux and Sun’s own products, Solaris and Java — McNealy believes many government officials don’t understand it, fear it and even oppose it for ideological reasons. McNealy cited an open-source development project that Sun worked on with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, during which a federal official said “that open source was anti-capitalist.” That sentiment, McNealy fears, is not unusual or isolated.”

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MissMachine writes “I’m a computer science major who has been recently getting involved in local grassroots politics in my county and state. I’ve been discussing the idea with some of my state legislatures of submitting a couple of resolutions, opening up to the idea of switching to open source software in our state’s K-12 schools. I’m looking for more information/literature about this topic, open source solutions in public K-12 education, pros and cons, studies that prove or disprove many of the assumptions of open source and linux in public schools. Any help in this field?”

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darthcamaro writes in with an interview with Markus Rex, Novell’s top Linux exec and the former CTO of the Linux Foundation. While some open source vendors see the current economy as a boon to open source, the interview concludes with Rex’s speculation on the contrary possibility. “The other thing is in both Europe and the US the rise of the unemployment rate is something that is rather unprecedented… The open source community to a certain degree is dependent on the willingness of people to contribute. We see no indication that anything might change there, but who knows? People need something to live off.” Have you thought about scaling back open source work as the economy continues to contract?

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