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ArcRiley writes "After 3 years of development and 6 weeks of beta testing, Icecast 2.0 has been officially released! Features include support for both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, a web administration interface, support for listing in directories (such as dir.xiph.org), and is freely available under the GNU GPL for Linux and Windows."

A moron asks: "Web pages change and disappear all the time. For legal and historical purposes, I need to have accessible archives of the websites I maintain. I'm basically looking for a do-it-yourself version of Internet Archive's Way Back Machine which provides a simple versioning system and accessibility through web interface. Is there already software that does this? If not, what ideas does Slashdot have to make such a system possible? How should it work? What existing tools can be used together to make a workable system?"

"There are all sorts of tools out there that will archive web pages, and each have other necessary features such as making links relative. I don't always have filesystem access to pages, so tools that rely on such access won't work. There are some obvious tools that do part of the job such as:

• curl
• wget
• httrack

But grabbing pages is only part of my, and I suspect many other peoples needs. The other pieces include intelligently archiving the pages, and making them accessible. If a page or a page element hasn't changed, there is no need to store multiple copies. The archives need to be easy for end users to navigate, search, and link."

depesz writes "As we can read here, savannah is back online. After several weeks of downtime, all security problems are resolved, and the service is again operational."

depesz writes "As we can read here, savannah is back online. After several weeks of downtime, all security problems are resolved, and the service is again operational."

Scot W. Stevenson writes "Our favorite paralegal Pamela Jones of Groklaw has put together a short FUD-killer on the General Public License that explains why you can't lose your proprietary code if you inadvertently incorporate GPL code. This is not the only text of its kind, but it is so well explained that you might want to bookmark the page for future reference."

Peorth writes "Intel has released version 8.0 of their Intel C/C++ compiler for both Windows and Linux. This release has been rumored for a long time to contain 100% GCC source and binary compatibility. It seems great strides have been made in advancement of that goal, as well as of its performance, but it may have a long way to go yet. Has anyone had experiences with it yet, either good or bad?"

An anonymous reader submits "I see that the Free Software Foundation is holding seminars about the GNU General Public License, the most popular unconstitutional Free Software license. If your company is working with Free Software, your managers or lawyers could probably learn something. I especially hope that Kevin McBride and David Boies will attend."

costela writes "LWN points out that the Gentoo project fired out an alert about one compromised rsync server." From the message itself: "However, the compromised system had both an IDS and a file integrity checker installed and we have a very detailed forensic trail of what happened once the box was breached, so we are reasonably confident that the portage tree stored on that box was unaffected." Update: 12/03 22:54 GMT by T : One more damage report: gibson writes "The Free Software Foundation recently discovered that its software host site was compromised a month ago. The compromise appears to be the same as the recent attacks on the Debian servers. The site is shut down until Friday while they install replacement hardware and verify the authenticity of the hosted source code."

Are We Afraid writes "The FCC is about to approve the broadcast flag for HDTV, according to Reuters. The EFF has been vocal in its disapproval, but the suits appear to be pushing ahead anyway. We may soon need an updated dystopian parable: The Right to Watch."

nead writes "If you are disciple in the church of Wall, or like me you believe that laziness is the father of invention, or if you simply have more than a couple *nix machine to administer, Kirk Bauer's new book Automating Unix and Linux Administration is definitely for you. From the creator of the popular open source projects AutoRpm and LogWatch comes a thorough - and believe it or not entertaining - look at how one can leverage the power of a few common tools to significantly reduce the time and effort system administrators spend doing their jobs." Read on below for the rest of nead's review. Automating Unix and Linux Administration author Kirk Bauer pages 547 publisher Apress Inc. rating 8.0 reviewer Nick Downey ISBN 1590592123 summary Tools and methods for automating *nix administration for a couple (or a few thousand) computers.

From the outset, Bauer takes a straightforward and principled approach to problem analysis. Usually starting with anecdotal example scenarios (many of which will have you saying "been there before") and progressing through ideals, goals and consequences, he examines many of the common issues facing system administrators with candor and realism. Almost nowhere in the book does the author assume an authoritarian stance; he questions his own decision making process and encourages the reader to come up with exceptions to his rules. Fundamentally Bauer has one goal -- to develop a comprehensive system for reliably automating the tedious but important tasks that all system administrators face on a recurring basis.

Admittedly, it would be a fallacy for any book to claim complete and comprehensive coverage of all things related to system administration and Bauer does no such thing. When the author touches on topics that obviously require more depth than a single chapter can afford, he is certain to include at least one reference (and in many instances more) to alternate publications without bias to any particular publisher or author. Having said that, the book's scope and depth of topic coverage is impressive. Starting with an exhaustive examination of SSH and progressing through cfengine, NFS, LDAP, RPM and Tripwire (just to name a few) Bauer provides carefully detailed instruction on how to automate tasks ranging from simple network management and software packaging to security, monitoring and backups. The author even goes so far as to suggest methods for efficiently front-ending automation systems for the less technical of users.

Although not expressly stated in the text, the overall theme of the book is walk on the shoulders of giants. Starting with simple example scripts (in both Bash and Perl) and many single-line commands, Bauer builds on the content of each previous chapter as the book progresses. Examples shown in early chapters are incorporated into more complex systems one step at a time. Following along is easy, each script or command is detailed on a line-by-line basis, and because of Bauer's principle-based approach the reader is rarely left wondering why the author has chosen a particular tool or implementation. More often than not the elegance of how Bauer pieces together methods and procedures will excite you about the possibilities for automation of your own systems.

Although Bauer explicitly states that readers are presumed to have more than a modicum of experience in system administration, even the novice administrator, as well as those that are responsible for only a handful of machines, will find this book invaluable. Also included are three appendices which provide an easy introduction to basic shell tools, creating your own RedHat distribution and how to package software as RPMs. These portions of the book alone justify the less than $40 price tag, but for those who run clusters or data centers, this book stands to save you countless hours of repetitive headaches. Published by apress and boasting nearly 600 pages, this lively read has made itself a permanent addition to at least one reference library.

You can purchase Automating Unix and Linux Administration from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

5p1urge asks: "I really love the Mono and DotGNU projects. As someone who's worked in Java for for over 5 years, I welcome C# and it's buddies to the OpenSource world. However, here's question: as far as I can tell, only the C# spec and System.* assemblies were submitted to ECMA and therefore made officially public. What happens when MS decides that, Linux -is- going to steal valuable income-generating business, and therefore it should use it's newly acquired patents to sue? I'd appreciate comments from IT lawyers / solicitors and individuals with experience in this area, as well as from the wider community. I'm asking this question because I want to code in mono / DotGnu but I'm cautious because I wonder if MS can take it away from us?"

Charles Goodwin writes "Xr, the vector graphics extension for XFree86 that Keith Packard, Carl Worth, and a few others have been hard at work on, has been renamed and is now officially called Cairo. Keith and Carl recently gave a detailed presentation on Cairo (then known as Xr) which should be a useful read for those wishing to understand it a little better. There is already a useful Gtk+ rendering backend that uses Cairo, as well as an SVG test suite. This, along with Gnome2's subtle adoption of SVG and the inception of Xouvert (which now has goals for both the short term and long term, and an initial plan which includes coexisting with XFree86), spells a bright future for the eye candy of an X desktop."

Charles Goodwin writes "Xr, the vector graphics extension for XFree86 that Keith Packard, Carl Worth, and a few others have been hard at work on, has been renamed and is now officially called Cairo. Keith and Carl recently gave a detailed presentation on Cairo (then known as Xr) which should be a useful read for those wishing to understand it a little better. There is already a useful Gtk+ rendering backend that uses Cairo, as well as an SVG test suite. This, along with Gnome2's subtle adoption of SVG and the inception of Xouvert (which now has goals for both the short term and long term, and an initial plan which includes coexisting with XFree86), spells a bright future for the eye candy of an X desktop."

feklee writes "The preparations for the rally against software patents on Wednesday are running at full speed. Thanks to announcements in DWN, on KDE, in the Register, and elsewhere, the Online Demo has already more than 600 participants such as Savannah and KDE.de. Now, what about your project?"

And flagboy writes "A group of economists from Europe and the U.S. specialising in patent questions have published a letter to members of the European Parliament calling on them to reject the proposal, accompanied by an analytical paper which casts severe doubts on the reasoning behind the directive and on the methods employed by its proponents." Here's the FFII Press Release.

Dan writes "FreeBSD's Joe Marcus Clarke has committed an update to the gettext port to 0.12.1 on FreeBSD. GNU `gettext' is an important step for the GNU Translation Project, as it is an asset on which we may build many other steps. This package offers to programmers, translators, and even users, a well integrated set of tools and documentation. Specifically, the GNU `gettext' utilities are a set of tools that provides a framework to help other GNU packages produce multi-lingual messages."

Mark Tobenkin writes "Are corporations exploiting the Open Source community? The Linux Public Broadcasting Network has video interviews with Ian Murdock (of Progeny and Debian fame), Martin Roesch (author of Snort), Jeremey White (CEO of CodeWeavers), Bradley Kuhn (FSF), Mike Balma (Linux Business Strategist for HP) and others on the evolving OSS business models. The interviews center around whether integration with proprietary products endangers the Open Source effort or increases consumers' freedom to choose."

landley writes "The Free Software Foundation's FTP site at ftp.gnu.org has been "compromised", and they don't seem to have full backups. They've yanked a bunch of recent packages (and their whole alpha.gnu.org ftp site), and when I asked about it they responded 'Our FTP server was compromised, yes. We are beginning to find good MD5sums for files which have not yet been restored, and they will be available again Real Soon Now. If you can provide MD5sums for any of the files listed in MISSING-FILES, it would be very much appreciated.' " Update the FSF has a statement on the FTP site explaining the matter.

landley writes "The Free Software Foundation's FTP site at ftp.gnu.org has been "compromised", and they don't seem to have full backups. They've yanked a bunch of recent packages (and their whole alpha.gnu.org ftp site), and when I asked about it they responded 'Our FTP server was compromised, yes. We are beginning to find good MD5sums for files which have not yet been restored, and they will be available again Real Soon Now. If you can provide MD5sums for any of the files listed in MISSING-FILES, it would be very much appreciated.' " Update the FSF has a statement on the FTP site explaining the matter.

landley writes "The Free Software Foundation's FTP site at ftp.gnu.org has been "compromised", and they don't seem to have full backups. They've yanked a bunch of recent packages (and their whole alpha.gnu.org ftp site), and when I asked about it they responded 'Our FTP server was compromised, yes. We are beginning to find good MD5sums for files which have not yet been restored, and they will be available again Real Soon Now. If you can provide MD5sums for any of the files listed in MISSING-FILES, it would be very much appreciated.' " Update the FSF has a statement on the FTP site explaining the matter.

Ancipital was one of several who noted that a special patch is going into GCC. The file is README.SCO, and it is a short writeup about the SCO situation written by the FSF. It stops short of demanding that GCC developers strip SCO support from the compiler, and says more will be announced before the next compiler release.

Wiz writes "The latest and greatest version of gcc is now out - v3.3.1! As an update to the current version, it is bug fixes only. You can find the list of changes here and you can download it from their mirror sites. Enjoy!"

Wiz writes "The latest and greatest version of gcc is now out - v3.3.1! As an update to the current version, it is bug fixes only. You can find the list of changes here and you can download it from their mirror sites. Enjoy!"

Stian Engen writes "Bradley Kuhn of the FSF does not recommend the release of new software using the Apple Public Source License (APSL) 2.0 despite its newly accuired Free Software License."

Stian Engen writes "Bradley Kuhn of the FSF does not recommend the release of new software using the Apple Public Source License (APSL) 2.0 despite its newly accuired Free Software License."

pfleming asks: "Several months ago I began a maintenance fork of some niche software. Essentially, these are PHP/MySQL scripts for real estate offices. The original developer moved on to an incompatible version to what I was using. Upgrading for me and many other users was not the easiest option. Luckily the software is GPL'd and so continued work on the fork is not a big deal. I have set up a site, made it available for download, announced the availability of the fork on Freshmeat and the forums for the original software. Now I have a few people subscribed to the project on Freshmeat, and a few on a mailman list set up for the project. This project has been listed on the GNU Website and other mirror sites but doesn't get much discussion on the mailman list and nothing from the Freshmeat subscribers. There is usually an increase in interest (indicated by a short term increase in site hits) when new releases are announced but this fades back to regular traffic of ~40 visits per day as measured by webalizer after a short period of time. Is this an anomaly? Should I be thankful that there aren't tons of bug reports and feature requests?"

"More questions for you to chew on:

• Is there more interest in a new project vs. one that is more or less mature?
• Is the project too narrow to attract an audience?
• Could the underlying business (real estate) just be too saturated with web sites?

Just what are the secrets to a successful (measured by lots of contributors, etc) project...or am I just not defining success correctly?

What other thoughts does Slashdot have on this subject?"

Mark Wielaard writes "The gcj team created a natively compiled build of the Eclipse IDE. The resulting binary starts up faster then with any traditional JVM since there is no virtual machine to initialize or slow byte code interpreter or just in time compiler involved. This means that gcj got a lot better since the last Slashdot story in December about gcj and Eclipse. Red Hat provides RPMs for easy installation. Footnotes has screenshots by Havoc Pennington of the Eclipse IDE with GTK+ widgets."

pndiku writes "Linux Journal has an interesting interview with Brian Kernighan where he talks about AWK, AMPL and how he had nothing to do with the creation of C."

Ashcrow writes "The feasibility for DirectFB to replace XFree86 just a little stronger thanks Maurizio Monge very first alpha release of Trolltech's Qt library for use in DirectFB. You can check out some screenshots or go straight to the source. And yes, it has been released as Free Software."

bkuhn writes "Given the recent confusion about LGPL on slashdot, and the concern it raised for those convincing corporate legal departments to adopt to Free Software, perhaps your readers might be interested in FSF's legal seminar on the GPL and related licenses. The first one is in Silicon Valley, and if it is successful, we hope to hold others in the next 8 months in New York City and Tokyo." Since the FSF and the GNU project have long created and fought for software that's shareable, Free, and Not UNIX, what's taught at these seminars will probably differ sharply from what you can hear at next Monday's SCO conference call on the "IBM lawsuit, UNIX Ownership and Copyrights."

An anonymous reader writes "Russian physicists Gorshenev and Pis'mak have posted a preprint claiming evidence that software projects naturally attain a state of self-organized criticality, in a process analogous to the contested theory of punctuated equilibrium in biological evolution (see also this paper by Bak and Boettcher). The software projects studied are FreeBSD, Mozilla, and GNU Emacs, by analyzing data from their CVS checkins."

An anonymous reader sends in Monitor Man: "Monitor Man is the latest idea in Japan for advertising at sports matches. Seems to be quite popular with the kids, anyway... siliconshock writes "Here is a torrent link to a 10 year old educational video from the SPA (Software Publisher's Association), which tells kids not to 'copy that floppy'. The video contains oldskool screen shots from "Oregon Trail", "Tetris" and other games of the era. The best part is the rapper who is singing and dancing to a great anti-piracy song. Here is more info. The file is 16mb, and in case you were worried about this file being copyrighted.... 'The Software Publishers Association gives you permission to copy this video for the non-profit purpose of promoting the ethical and legal use of software.'" And [vmlinuz] writes "After recently hearing a few different versions of RMS's legendary Free Software Song, I decided to do my own version, considerably heavier. You can get it in MP3 and OGG format."

Slashback tonight brings updates and followups on several recent Slashdot postings. Among other things, Linksys says they're not violating the GPL, and Tiger Direct says that Michael Robertson's claims about Microsoft targeting Lindows buyers are way off base. Speaking of which, Microsoft has decided it makes more sense to embrace schools than to alienate them with hard-nosed licensing policies on donated PCs. Also, a torrent file for the Red Hat 9 version of Ximian's latest desktop, and more. Read on for the details.

Fork carefully or be forked preemptively. BSD Forums writes "The leader of the open-source JBoss Java application server environment said that if the group of developers that left his organization attempts to splitâ"or "fork" as it's called in the industryâ"the JBoss code base, he would sue them. Marc Fleury, president of JBoss Group LLC, Atlanta, said he is prepared to take legal action if the group of developers who left the JBoss Group to form a new company, known as Core Developers Network LLC, attempts to diverge from the JBoss code base."

They can learn in the classroom, or outside it. MVP writes "Fridrik "frisk" Skulason, of F-Prot fame (you know, that good old DOS free for personal use antivirus, up-to-date & usable for windows), has a very acid reaction against the decision of University of Calgary to start teaching virus-writing classes (see previous Slashdot thread)."

Just let me control the textbooks ... After a few stories like this one, it may please some people to see at least a partial turnaround from Microsoft on computers donated to schools without Windows licenses. Patrick Cable II writes "I got an interesting letter from Microsoft today at work. Microsoft has started a "Fresh Start" program for educational instutions that basically makes it so schools who have had computers donated to them without licenses or media can get media and a letter stating the computer is licensed to use a Windows operating system (98 or 2000). More information can be found here. Anyone think they're trying to figure out a way to deal with the whole Linux thing?"

Software in the Public Interest has yet to respond with a lower licensing fee for Debian.

More fun than "The Winds of War." For fans of Kim Stanley Robinson, space exploration and colonization, space elevators et cetera, reader Unbeliever writes with new that Hurd will soon meet Mars. "No, not GNU/Hurd, but Gale Ann Hurd. Hurd just signed a deal with Sci-Fi to produce Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars as a Sci-Fi 6-hour miniseries. Red Mars is the first of the Robinson's Red/Green/Blue Mars Trilogy, an 'almost plausible sci-fi' future-history approach about Colonizing and Terraforming Mars. The trilogy looks at the technological, sociological, personal, and political challenges of terraforming a different planet. Also of interest to Slashdotters in general is Robinson's ideas on the growth of multi-national corporations into Meta-Nations, and their effects on world politics."

But doesn't that make it radio their way? In the recent Radio Your Way review, our reviewer said of the device that it had "[n]o off button! As far as I can tell, once you turn the device on there is no way to manually turn it off other than to wait for it to enter sleep mode after several minutes. Very annoying."

Another reader writes with this workaround: "In any mode, hold down the stop button (a little square under the play button) for 2-3 seconds to turn off the unit. This is listed in the manual, which you are right, is a very poorly done Korean effort."

Calm down that jerking knee, then apply ice. In response a post which raised the question of whether Linksys was in violation of the GPL by not distributing, nor offering links to, the source code for the software controlling their 802.11g base stations. A representative from Linksys-PR sent in this note about the "missing" source code:

Linksys is a strong proponent of both Linux and the Open Source movement. The code within our routers is using User Space code without linking dynamically or statically to any GPL (GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE) code. Any code which does not have a static or dynamic link to anything covered by the General Public License is not GPL'ed, and can be considered closed source.

We regret it took some time to respond to this posting. To assure timely responses to inquiries like this in the future, please use the following procedure which complies with the requirements of the General Public License:

1. Please put your request in writing or in an email addressed to info@Linksys.com
2. You have to request the code for the specific modules you want. It is not valid to issue a request for any "code you may be using."
3. Technically, you are also supposed to provide us with a self-addressed stamped envelope, along with funds to cover the cost of providing the code to you. But Linksys will handle requests on a case-by-case basis. Thank you."

Straight from the Tiger's mouth. Tiger Direct Executive Vice President Richard Wallet wrote to contradict Michael Robertson's claims that Microsoft was targeting Tiger Direct customers who purchased Lindows systems to offer them steep discounts on Windows XP. Wallet writes:

"TigerDirect is not selling any version of Windows for $50. We are selling Microsoft Windows XP just like any other reseller and we are in compliance with all of Microsoft's licensing agreements, no better, no worse, and no different.

TigerDirect does sell low-cost systems with the Lindows operating system. TigerDirect also sells low-cost systems with Microsoft Windows XP. TigerDirect even sells systems with NO operating systems. The only parties who can tell us which products are or aren't worth selling are our customers. Neither Microsoft nor Lindows has a significant influence on what we buy and sell. We aim to serve our customers with the products they want at the very best values available and world-class customer service.

TigerDirect did in fact perform a survey of its customers as it does on a regular basis. Contrary to the author's claim, this survey was not only sent to Lindows buyers. It was sent to everybody who bought systems from TigerDirect during a specific time period. The purpose of the survey was to help us better serve the needs of our customers by getting a better understanding of what they're using the systems for, what they're running on them, and why they purchased what they did. The result of the survey is going to be to help us better align our PC product mix to increase sales."

Many monkeys make slick visuals. IamTheRealMike writes "Hi all, there is a BitTorrent of the XD2 RPMs for Red Hat 9 available, please be gentle with it. It comes as a directory that contains a readme and an ISO - make sure you read the readme first as there is a bug in the installer you need to know about. When all is done and you've read the instructions, just mount the ISO using the loopback device and point the installer at it. For all those who have been trying and failing to get it using the mirror network, this might provide a useful alternative."

rjnagle writes "I got my cubicle colleague interested in OpenOffice.org when I said, "Here's something that can convert your Word files to PDF ... for free!" By now people hip to the open source concept use OpenOffice.org for everyday applications, yet MS Office is still the predominant application in the home and workplace. Many educated people have still not heard of it. Why?" Read on for Nagle's four-part answer to that question, and his (lengthy) review of Michael Koch's Special Edition Using Star Office 6.0 -- the content applies to StarOffice's free cousin OpenOffice.org as well. Special Edition Using Star Office 6.0 author Michael Koch pages 1078 + index publisher Que rating quality: 5 stars; usability: 4 stars; weight: 1 star reviewer Robert Nagle ISBN 0789728338 summary Great for easing the transition to Openoffice/Staroffice.

First, PC makers rarely have financial inducements to preinstall open source applications, especially when it eats into their upsell margins. Second, people have a misconception that documents produced in MS Office can only be read by MS Office (a fact which leads Richard Stallman to call for an end to all Microsoft Word attachments ). Third, subsidized prices and the wide availability of instructional material ensure that teachers use these commercial products for class and give assignments requiring them. Finally, consumers switching to an open source product need confidence that the open source application has equivalent functionality and adequate documentation to reduce the learning curve.

Fortunately, a first-class user guide on OpenOffice.org/StarOffice has been written, and that book is Michael Koch's Special Edition Using StarOffice 6.0. This book, actually a second edition, covers the new version and gives fuller treatment to StarOffice writer and the HTML editor. Despite the use of "StarOffice" in the title, this book actually covers both StarOffice and OpenOffice.org in depth.

An an aside, let me compliment Que editions for the legibility and usability of layout. (Que also produced the excellent Ed Bott's Special Edition Using Microsoft Office XP). Nice readable texts, lots of boxes, tips and cautions. Every chapter finishes with a helpful troubleshooting section.

Two immediate reactions: 1) Gosh, I didn't know OpenOffice/StarOffice could do all that! I was pleasantly surprised, for example, to learn the number of graphic capabilities the program has. 2) This book covers functionality in considerable depth, with enough content to satisfy the newbie as well as the advanced user. In addition to documenting the office software, the book also includes reference sections on StarOffice Basic, using data sources, building forms and macros. It also includes a chapter on Adabas, the database that comes as part of the StarOffice package (but not with OpenOffice.org).

Koch benefits from the fact that users already start with a good conceptual framework of what MS Office products are supposed to do. The biggest conceptual challenge in moving from MS Office to Star/OpenOffice is getting used to the idea of applying styles to text instead of just clicking on an icon for formatting. MS Office actually has terrific styling capabilities (and a usable interface for managing styles),but Microsoft's friendly GUI discourages users from thinking about document structure. Contrast that to OpenOffice.org, which nudges the user more firmly towards styles. Managing the different layers of styles in OpenOffice.org can be tricky and confusing, so Koch spends a considerable amount of time and space on that. Another chapter on sharing and exchanging information with MS Office users goes into exquisite detail about compatibility and formatting losses when converting documents, as well as the StarOffice XML file format.

Cordelia of Buffy the Vampire Slayer once said, "There are books about computers? Isn't that the point of computers, to replace books?" Perhaps I am just cheap, but when evaluating a user guide, I often ask whether the online help isn't good enough. Or whether newgroups/websites/forums are adequate. Or whether the user interface is intuitive or allows you to discover a solution by just playing around. Dozens of heavy thousand-page books clutter my apartment, leading me to wonder whether the convenience of a gigantic dead-tree reference guide outweighs the increase in clutter. Every time I move to another apartment, I keep lugging those gigantic SQL and C++ books I haven't consulted for years, but feel compelled to keep around. (Contrast that with the very portable and handy Oreilly's Linux Server Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools, (reviewed on Slashdot), which covers most sysadmin tasks AND can be stashed in a backpack without causing whiplash).

For the last two months (in which I used OpenOffice.org thoroughly), I performed a little experiment. Where was the best place to find answers to my OpenOffice.org questions? I tried consulting the online help, then the book, then the newsgroups and openoffice websites. Here are the results:

1. Adding page numbers. The book had the best information, though what do you look under in the index? I eventually found it under "Numbers, Writer" (?!). Online help was useless. (The answer is to insert a footer and then insert a page number field in the footer).
2. I just created a hyperlink in the HTML editor. But the underlined style is bleeding to the text after the link. How do I stop that? Neither the book nor online help provided the answer, although the newsgroup did after 24 hours. (The answer is to press the End key or to select Format >> Default)
3. How do I create an HTML style with the stylist which specifies the background color of a table cell? (No answer from anywhere, although Koch admits that that the StarOffice HTML editor is "temperamental").
4. While drawing a flowchart on the Draw program, how do I save the entire image as a jpeg and not just the highlighted part? (By grouping the components together, the book helpfully advises. The online help offers nothing).
5. On a spreadsheet, what is the keyboard shortcut for bringing the cursor back to the left column? (Keyboard shortcuts are easy to find in the book. Couldn't find it in the online help).

Generally, the book had the most reliable and in-depth information. That was especially helpful when trying to perform a complex action (like creating a table of contents). But the majority of my inquiries had to do with using the interface, not functionality. Often the sheer size of the book made daunting the simple task of finding a function on a dialog or a keyboard shortcut.

That is the paradox of super-sized application manuals. Surely one doesn't read them from cover to cover. But after an application reaches a certain level of complexity, the software interface is no longer intuitive, and you pretty much need a book just to find things in the interface. As one who does technical writing, it may sound funny to say, but often my favorite thing about these super-size manuals are the screenshots. I can't tell you how many times I've browsed through a book and come across a dialog box I never knew existed. On the other hand, when application manuals reach a certain size, navigating through "book interfaces" becomes almost as difficult as navigating through the software interface or help system.

Online help is good when you know what you're looking for (i.e., when you have a specific search term to look for). Books are good when you don't know what you're looking for. With books, the reader can flip through pages in the general vicinity of a topic and randomly stumble upon the right information. Books allow the user to bypass the outlined hierarchy of online help and learn the appropriate terminology for describing the task (which then makes it easier to find things in the online help).

A recent visit to a technical bookstore and a large chain bookstores showed no books on the shelf for StarOffice, but dozens of books on Microsoft Office, That is too bad, because Using StarOffice 6.0 provides much-needed in-depth coverage on an application whose user base will grow as tight budgets cause companies and public sector agencies to examine open source alternatives.

* PDF conversion (as well as docbook and Flash) export are available on the OpenOffice.org 1.1 Beta 2 build.

Other OpenOffice.org Resources:

Kaaredyret has the best English language OpenOffice links page . ooodocs.org has a lively Forum for OO users. Or if you want, you can look at a PDF of the official Staroffice Documentation (400 pages)

ROBERT NAGLE (aka idiotprogrammer )is a technical writer, trainer who doesn't think that open source documentation sucks . He works for Texas Instruments in Houston, Texas. You can purchase the Special Edition Using StarOffice 6.0 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Dr. Zowie writes "Perl Data Language 2.4.0 was just released; get it here. This release includes even more powerful array slicing, a complete GIS cartography package, API access to the Gnu Scientific Library, and a host of other goodies. Between PDL and its less-mature siblings Numeric Python and Octave, the established commercial languages' days appear numbered."

Uruk asks: "Over the last few years, we've seen what looks like the victory of copyright and business interest at the expense of the consumer. There's been The DMCA, the UCITA, all of the legal wranging over DeCSS, and so on. Copyright holders can even shut your website down without doing the research about whether or not it was appropriate. Johansen did seem to be acquited of some of what was brought against him as a result of the DeCSS situation, but that was in Norway. Does anyone know of any copyright or consumer victories on the net in the last few years? Something that limits the abilities of these laws, or otherwise acts in the copyright spirit of free use? My hat is off to GNU and EFF, even Project Gutenberg. What is the status of this ongoing battle? I'm looking for the sunny side to a situation that seems littered with defeat."

leighklotz writes "Debian developer and Internet Mail Archive founder Jeff Breidenbach of PARC has made GlyphChess, a chess-playing copier using Python, GNU Chess and DataGlyphs attached to the bottom of the pieces. DataGlyphs are cool 2D barcodes made out of / and \ marks for ones and zeros that use the coding from CDs for error coding. If you don't happen to have a Xerox machine at home, it also works with SANE..."

molarmass192 writes "Here's the first reaction I've seen from SCO regarding the public's stance that the code they distributed under the GPL negates their claims on code in the Linux kernel. They claim that the lack of copyright notices "placed by the copyright holder" means that the GPL does not protect the unmentioned code in question. "

commanderfoxtrot writes "Ghostscript 7.07 has been released. However, this is the last GNU release. They will continue to make releases under the GNU GPL, but because of disagreements over censorship of the AFPL releases and the development model in the GNU release their development process has become incompatible with the goals of the GNU project as interpreted by Richard Stallman."

devphil writes "The latest version of everyone's favorite compiler, GCC 3.3, was released today. New features, bugfixes, and whatnot, are all available off the linked-to page. (Mirrors already have the tarballs.) Let the second-guessing begin!"

mbogosian asks: "Recently, my broadened responsibilities have me doing some database design and modeling, and I'm happy for the new knowledge and experience, but I'm a bit frustrated about the tool selection. I know most of us have had plenty of experience with at least a handful of all the wonderful Open Source development tools out there (like GCC, GNU Make, Subversion , and Perl to name a few). My question is this: where are OpenSource design tools? I've tried what I could find on SourceForge, but (as usual?) most of the projects that sounded promising were either still in the planning stages or seemed abandoned. Of course something which allowed be to create nifty class charts and output them to UML and/or SQL would be really cool, but I've yet to find something that works (especially in Linux). What are your favorite Open Source design tools and what do you like about them?"

mbogosian asks: "Recently, my broadened responsibilities have me doing some database design and modeling, and I'm happy for the new knowledge and experience, but I'm a bit frustrated about the tool selection. I know most of us have had plenty of experience with at least a handful of all the wonderful Open Source development tools out there (like GCC, GNU Make, Subversion , and Perl to name a few). My question is this: where are OpenSource design tools? I've tried what I could find on SourceForge, but (as usual?) most of the projects that sounded promising were either still in the planning stages or seemed abandoned. Of course something which allowed be to create nifty class charts and output them to UML and/or SQL would be really cool, but I've yet to find something that works (especially in Linux). What are your favorite Open Source design tools and what do you like about them?"

bcrowell asks: "Here's a moral conundrum for you. The much-hated DMCA can be a tool to enforce copyleft licenses, and in my case, it may be the only effective tool. I'm the author of some free physics textbooks (all free as in beer, some free as in speech) that are available under the GFDL and OPL copyleft licenses. I've learned that there's a guy on eBay who is selling my books on CD and violating the license. (Selling is allowed, since they're free-as-in-speech, but he's violating the license in various ways, such as not informing his buyers about the license, and selling them under a different title and using the tables of contents in his ads without showing the license or listing me as the author.) It's not just me. He's doing the same thing with other copylefted books, such as this one." The submitter is worried about the ethics behind using the recent misuses we've seen so far. Those interested in this question might also be interested in Prof. Felten's answers from his recent Slashdot interview.

"eBay has several different mechanisms for complaining about this, and I used one of them. Other people have complained too, but so far the result just seems to be that eBay deletes the listings of the items (which have already been sold). Meanwhile the guy is still violating copyleft licenses (as well as selling other copyright-violating stuff, such as screensavers containing commercial porn images).

Apparently the most effective way to deal with this on eBay is to participate in their vero program, which basically means sending the DMCA Police after the guy. For instance, if I wanted to sue the guy (which I don't), I'd need to know his name and address. The DMCA says that eBay has to provide that info to someone who complains about a copyright violation.

It seems like it would be a similar deal in the software world. The conventional wisdom about how to prevent infringement is to GPL your code, and transfer the copyright to the FSF, which will contact license violators and (theoretically) sue them if it comes to that. So how long will it be until the FSF is asked by an open-source developer to invoke the DMCA in order to deal with a license violation? In my own case, should I go ahead and join eBay's vero program? It would make me feel like I was in bed with the enemy, but it does seem like it would give me some very effective options for dealing with the situation. For instance, members of the program can have eBay run automated boolean searches for copyright-violating items, and get the results e-mailed to them periodically.

One possible reply to my question is 'Why do you care?" The problem here is that this guy is doing exactly what RMS originally designed copyleft to prevent: he's taking free information and making it not-free. His customers don't know that the books are copylefted, and have effectively had their own freedom taken away: they don't know they can modify the books, copy them, or sell them."

Syntaxis writes "There's some considerable argy-bargy in progress over whether or not GNU's own GFDL is a Free documentation license at all. At issue are "invariant sections" which cannot be removed from derivative works. Check out the thread culminating in the proposed motion to take action. The current consensus on Debian-legal does indeed appear to be that one of the FSF's own licenses is non-Free under the terms of the Debian Free Software Guidelines! Well, documentation for GPLed projects countermanding the very freedoms embodied in the GPL certainly seems insane to me."

Selanit writes "Just came across a fascinating article on Salon about a technologist who claims that there is no such thing as "interference" in the radio spectrum. He argues that interference is a symptom of inadequate equipment, not a fact of nature, and that with improved transceivers we could open the spectrum up to high-quality broadcasts by anyone. Reference is made to the GNU Radio Project. Neat stuff." We've posted other stories about this. I wonder if the "color" meme will catch on.

Dan writes "Matthias Scheler has imported XFree86 4.3.0 into NetBSD current, it is only tested under NetBSD-i386 at the moment. Also, as part of updating the toolchain, Matthew Green has imported the latest GNU binutils (2.13.2.1) into NetBSD-current. The new GNU binutils adds support for hppa and x86_64, improved support for existing architectures and is known to work for almost all CPU types NetBSD currently supports. Updates of gdb and gcc will follow."

NortonDC writes "High Definition TV has been successfully captured in its native data stream from an over the air broadcast by a software defined radio that is Free and open source from the GNU Software Defined Radio project."

NortonDC writes "High Definition TV has been successfully captured in its native data stream from an over the air broadcast by a software defined radio that is Free and open source from the GNU Software Defined Radio project."

JoshRendlesham writes "The Open Watcom C/C++ and FORTRAN 1.0 compilers have been officially released. The source, and binaries for Win32 and OS/2 systems, are available. This release also means that outside developers can join and contribute to the project." Or if you prefer, gcc is up to 3.2.2.

Augustus De Morgan writes "Five years ago today a brainstorming session in Palo Alto led to the adoption and promotion of the "open source" label. (You can find references to the label much earlier, however.) For some, it was a dark divergence from the free software movement; for others, the beginning of the adoption of key software principles into mainstream. Here's a growing set of resources and stories about the history of free and open source software, and a lament about the decline of altruism in the open source community."

Slashback with updates and amplifications on Apple's stance on DRM, EasyInternetCafe's court battle over CD burning, a copyright law being drafted after Lessig's own heart, the lawyer vs. eBay saga, and VoIP calling with Linux. Read on below for the details.

But sir, all of these songs are under the Open Content License! atta1 writes "In an article on The Register, EasyInternetcafe has lost its court battle against British Phonographic Industry (BPI) over burning downloaded music to CD."

When last mentioned (August of last year), EasyInternetCafe was trying to avoid fines from BPI for letting Internet cafe customers burn to CD music they'd downloaded there.

After all, somebody's got to write 'em. g_adams27 writes "Several weeks ago, Larry Lessig proposed anti-spam legislation he'd like to see Congress pass -- legislation which he was willing to bet his job on. Now it looks like Washington might be taking his bet... and they want us to help out!

A congressional aide appears to be drafting legislation based on Larry's suggestions and is asking the Politech list for suggestions. The proposed law is posted here."

IP leases are nicer than telephone leases. Lots of people were interested in the story posted the other day about VoIP support in GnomeMeeting. I mentioned there that theKompany had a VoIP application for Zaurus owners; Shawn Gordon of theKompany writes with information about a forthcoming desktop version as well.

"So we released tkcPhone a few weeks ago, we found some issues with Net2Phone that we've just finished sorting out today, and we've about wrapped up the tkPhone beta, which we expect in a day or two. Having tkPhone allows us to do some things we couldn't on the Zaurus, like make use of a Speex codec which is part of the Xiph umbrella these days, we couldn't use it on the Zaurus because it requires floating point support. We also can have a system tray notifier and a roomier user interface. Because we spent so much time optimizing everything to work on the Zaurus, it means your desktop performance is going to be very good.

We decided to use SIP as opposed to H323 for a lot of reasons: smaller, faster, lighter, newer, easier hardware requirements. So with our phone a regular sound card and a headset/mic will typically suffice for what you need or want to do. Our arrangement with Net2phone means that in addition to PC-to-PC calls, you can make PC-to-phone and PC-to-mobile calls as well. The prices range from free to as little as $0.02 per minute in the U.S. and $0.03 minute internationally. You're already paying for your internet access, might as well start to piggyback this stuff.

tkPhone is not free however, it is $9.95 for the electronic version of the application. We expect to have it up for sale about February 10, 2003."

And as several readers pointed out, if you're interested in VoIP on Linux, you should also check out the sites of both the Bayonne project (mentioned several times before)and asterisk (also discussed here).

You mean they're against my inalienable right to watch movies for free? geekee writes "An article on CNET states that the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) will include DRM support in the MPEG-4 open standard. Without DRM, the ISMA doesn't believe MPEG-4 will be able to compete against proprietary standards such as that provided by Microsoft since content owners 'want continually improved tools, with rights management.' For instance, Movielink, an online movie rental source, has opted to support Microsoft and RealNetwork formats because of their DRM capabilities. An interesting thing to note is that Apple is a member of the ISMA, and has previously declared its opposition to DRM."

Money talks, and sometimes it says nasty things. scubacuda writes "Since eBay removed the alleged libelous statements, Roger Grace has agreed to drop his libel lawsuit for $2.5 million in punitive damages from eBay and $100,000 from Tim Neeley (who wrote that the magazines he bought from Grace had arrived late and in a worse condition than advertised). Interestingly, eBay removed the feedback not because it was 'negative,' but rather because 'the contact information for the seller was not correct.' Chris Donlay, eBay spokesman, says, '[T]hat is one of the circumstances in which we will consider removing the feedback,' EBay attorneys even went to far as to claim that Grace's original lawsuit is 'completely without merit.'"

(Here's the Slashdot post from last Saturday, 'Attorney Sues eBay over Negative Feedback'.)