This week we are giving away a copy of Linux Made Easy: the Official Guide to Xandros 3 for Everyday Users by Rickford Grant.
All you need to do to enter is:
1) Read our terms and conditions
2) Send your FSM subscriber name (the email address you use to login) and full name to
.
(There is no question to be answered for this week's competition.)
Entries open on the 27th of MArch 2006 and close on the 1st of April 2006.
Passwords are, without a doubt, the perferred method of online security by online blogs, portals, e-commerce sites and just about anything else. For the most part, this is a good system. But, like all security systems, there is a point of possible disclosure, and it lies with you, the password creator, manager and holder. There are tricks to managing passwords, and free software programs to make managing passwords simple and I’ll show you some of them, right now...
Free Software Magazine and the TeX Users Group (TUG) both like to publish interviews. Recently, Gianluca Pignalberi of Free Software Magazine and Dave Walden of TUG both approached Frank Mittelbach about interviewing him. Rather than doing two separate interviews, Mittelbach, Pignalberi, and Walden decided on a combined interview in keeping with the mutual interests already shared by Free Software Magazine and TUG.
DW: Frank, please start by telling us a bit about yourself and how you got involved with LaTeX.
There were lots of entries this week, but unfortunately there can only be one winner...
Congratulations Jim Coleman of Parkersburg, WV, USA!
Jim has won a copy of The Definitive Guide to ImageMagick.
Thanks to all who entered.
Thanks also go to Apress for providing this great prize.
Recently, a guy I know told me he had spoken to a friend of his about the possibility of installing GNU/Linux. “Hah!” Snorted his friend. “You? And GNU/Linux? Get real. That’s for hardcore geeks. You wouldn’t last.” And thus began the battle of spreading the free software word: trying to make my friend understand that GNU/Linux can ACTUALLY work for non-geeks and that making the switch won’t require him to suddenly understand jokes about binary. But, I knew all my friend really needed was a book like Linux Made Easy by Rickford Grant.
The book’s cover This week we are giving away a copy of The Debian System by Martin F. Krafft.
All you need to do to enter is:
1) Read our terms and conditions
2) Send your FSM subscriber name (the email address you use to login) and full name to
.
No answer is required for this week's competition.
Entries open on the 20th of March 2006 and close on the 26th of March 2006.
GOOD LUCK!
On the 9th of March, IBM DeveloperWorks held a technical meeting at their Bedfont Lakes office in London. I was sent an invitation and—due to the fact it sounded interesting, was free, and they were supplying lunch—I decided to tag along.
Recurring themes at this year’s PyCON2006 Python conference, in Dallas, Texas, included quality control techniques for Python (testing methods), and interoperable content management systems. Guido van Rossum presented some previews of features to be expected in Python 2.5 (to be released later this year), and Jim Fulton presented the “State of Zope”, with some musings on where to go from here with Zope 2 and Zope 3.
The title “The Debian System” may be misleading to some, but it shouldn’t be. As the author claims, this book isn’t yet another guide to GNU/Linux. It’s a guide to Debian GNU systems, whether the kernel is Linux, BSD, or Hurd. Thanks to this book, both Debian beginners and experienced users have a detailed guide to the Debian world: its organization, licenses, and tools.
The book’s coverNow this really sounds interesting. Wired is reporting about a new coding tool called playsh, a coding environment that works just like your favorite MUDs (multi-user dungeons). It combines the collaborative and spatial advantages of MUDs to give coders a new edge. I’m really excited about this product. I spent a sizable portion of my youth playing MUDs and hacking. Now I can do both!
February saw many free software events come to pass. These included: two major conferences, one on each side of the Atlantic; the surfacing of a couple of solutions for permitting composite window effects to use video acceleration; the adoption of free software in a number of scenarios; a new release of an old secure friend; the incremental launch of a distribution; and more. The main events are summarized as:
This week we are giving away a copy of The Definitive Guide to ImageMagick by Michael Still.
All you need to do to enter is:
1) Read our terms and conditions
2) Answer this question honestly, there is no correct answer:
If we printed a paper version of FSM and sold it at $6/issue on newsstands or $35 for a 12 month subscription, would you buy it?
3) Send your FSM subscriber name (the email address you use to login), full name and your answer to
Lately, I’ve been hearing more and more about Microsoft’s efforts on furthering what I believe they call the “Office User Experience”. This got me thinking. Doesn’t Microsoft have a near monopoly on office software at the moment? OK—There are other offerings out there—but do they warrant the massive expenditure MS is putting out on promoting this? Then it dawned on me. They must be panicking about OpenOffice.org and are doing what they can to prevent an exodus.
With that in mind, let me give some examples and my personal thoughts on the issue...
“Former Soviet Union” is a term that often makes people think of a somehow original concept of freedom and democracy. You can observe some heritage looking, for instance, at the facts of today’s Belarus [1,2] and Turkmenistan [3,4].
Anyway, even there, people always have had the will to express their ideas and opinions. Think, for instance, of the samizdat [5], or of the dissidents.
It can be difficult for free software projects to get the word out, especially without any corporate backing. My colleague Matt Raible has some interesting points to make about this issue, along with advice on how to market your free software project (it generally comes down to reaching out to your community of users and contributors). And I would add one more point: assign a press contact who will be friendly and prompt with inquiries. I don’t know how many times I’ve contacted a project and received a late or half-hearted response.
This book details the functionality of the ImageMagick package (primarily convert), by covering its command line usage, along with most of the valid options available and example images depicting the before and after effects.
The book’s coverThis week we are giving away a copy of Running Linux, 5th Ed. by Matthias Kalle Dalheimer & Matt Welsh.
All you need to do to enter is:
1) Read our terms and conditions
2) Send your FSM subscriber name (the email address you use to login), and full name to
.
Entries open on the 7th of March 2006 and close on the 11th of March 2006.
GOOD LUCK!
Welcome to the first newsletter listing and reviewing free culture events around the world. Free culture is a movement that extends the logic of free software into the world of art, advocating free creativity, sharing and remixing. There will be thousands of events with this ethos going on around the world, but the listings below are brought to you by activists and advocates of the free culture movement. You can add your events and reviews to this newsletter on the Free Culture UK newsletter wiki.
Node.l
Downloads can be much faster, more efficient, and simplified by using Metalinks, a new system which automates segmented downloading and checksum verification.
Free Software Magazine is obviously about free software. Many readers may also know that we create our magazine using free software. But, not only do we use free software, we also develop it.
I have developed the LaTeX class that we use to typeset the individual articles and each complete issue. Even though the class isn’t very well written (it is getting there!), whenever someone asks me to provide our LaTeX class, I do send a complete starter’s kit for turning LaTeX into a magazine typesetter; well... sort of.
Yes, I am a big LaTeX fan.
