DesktopLinux.com Contributing Editor Malcolm Dean reports from O'Reilly's annual Open Source Convention in balmy San Diego, where the political winds are shifting in the global war against copyright tyranny. How Steamboat Bill became Steamboat Willy, and Shakespeare was freed. Dean writes . . . (more…)

San Antonio, TX — (press release excerpt) — NVIDIA Corporation has announced that it is open sourcing the NVIDIA Cg Compiler technology under a nonrestrictive, free license. Available in August for download from the developer.nvidia.com and www.cgshaders.org Web sites, this code will contain the parser that reads the language and creates… (more…)

Scotts Valley, CA — (press release excerpt) — Borland Software Corporation today announced Borland Kylix 3, the first Rapid Application Development (RAD) solution for C++ and Borland Delphi on the Linux operating system. For the first time, Linux developers can quickly create GUI, database, Web, and Web Services applications in C++, the preferred programming language for the Linux operating… (more…)

Toronto, Canada — (press release excerpt) — The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) is offering free LPI certification testing at Linuxworld Conference & Expo, August 13-15, Moscone Conference Center, San Francisco. (more…)

Hong Kong — (press release excerpt) — Q-Net Technologies of the United States recently launched their Q-Reader, an electronic reading device for the education market in China. As well as reading capabilities, the multi-function device includes Web connectivity, email, and other PDA features, including support for… (more…)

Writing at LinuxJournal, John Biggs explains how to make old, cheap tablets work with the latest Mandrake distribution . . . (more…)

San Francisco, CA and Oslo, Norway — (press release excerpt) — IBM and Opera announced that they will jointly develop a multimodal browser based on the XHTML+Voice (X+V) specification. The beta version of the browser, available this fall, can allow access to Web and voice information from a single mobile device. (more…)

Karim Yaghmour writes . . .

In continuing my work on the Adeos nanokernel and following many discussions at the OLS, I concentrated on the idea of running multiple Linux kernels in parallel on SMP hardware in order to obtain SMP clusters. What started as a high-level investigation eventually turned out to be an in-depth search for a viable architecture. (more…)

Sunnyvale, CA — (press release excerpt)– MontaVista Software Inc. today announced its membership in and sponsorship of the RapidIO Trade Association. MontaVista is the first Linux supplier and the first open source vendor to join the 50+ member RapidIO organization, which establishes and promotes RapidIO as an open standard for embedded networking and communications applications. (more…)

An anonymous reader writes . . .

A representative from Sharp recently responded to an email inquiry regarding Best Buy's apparent discontinuation of the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 PDA. The following response was posted to Usenet, and is quoted below:

Sharp sold a certain number of SL-5500s to Best Buy through our distribution… (more…)

IBM has released DB2 v8.1 for Linux (Intel 32 and 64 bit). New features include multi-dimensional clustering (queries and analytics nearly 100% faster), self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing, self-protecting, and the ability to consolidate Web Services queries through a single SQL statement. (more…)

Insignia has teamed up with partners, HP, Intel, Metrowerks, Sharp (creators of the 'Zaurus' Linux-based PDA), Softbank Publishing and Sun Microsystems to find the best Java technology-based applications for Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). The JPDA 2002 Application Developers Contest is a global competition to promote the creation and public availability of Java applets and applications designed for… (more…)

Sunnyvale, CA — (press release excerpt) — MontaVista Software Inc. today announced that MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition 2.1 is available immediately to customers. This is the industry's first commercial, carrier-grade quality Linux distribution. Carrier Grade Edition is targeted for edge and core telecommunications solutions, including applications for the converging IP and voice networks, optical… (more…)

An announcement from theKompany . . .

theKompany has released 'tkcRekall'. This is a port of the Rekall desktop database front end to the Sharp Zaurus. (more…)

New Orleans, LA — (press release excerpt) — Wasabi Systems announced at Motorola's Smart Networks Developer Forum its support for Motorola's next-generation PowerQUICC III family of integrated communications processors. NetBSD, long recognized for its outstanding networking capabilities, is a powerful open source operating system widely used in Internet infrastructure. (more…)