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One problem with Linux has been its implementation of system calls. As Andy Lutomirski pointed out recently, it's very messy. more>>

Ansible is an open-source automation tool developed and released by Michael DeHaan and others in 2012. DeHaan calls it a "general-purpose automation pipeline" (see Resources for a link to the article "Ansible's Architecture: Beyond Configuration Management"). more>>

The ubiquity and convenience of smartphones has been a real boon for getting information on the go. more>>

There are lots of cool ideas on the Internet that never really make it out of the "startup" phase. IndieBox has been around only for a few months, but I really, really hope it catches on.

Here's the idea:

• Every month, you get a Linux/Mac/Windows-compatible Indie game in the mail. more>>

We're all familiar with the idea of virtualized computers. Not only are they a great way to better utilize resources in a server room, but they also allow you to create and destroy servers in the blink of an eye. That's perfect for a lab or training environment. Unfortunately, it's always taken a rack of actual hardware to create a training lab for Cisco hardware. more>>

Every year, heck...every month, Linux is adopted by more companies and organizations as an important if not primary component of their enterprise platform. And the more serious the hardware platform, the more likely it is to be running Linux. 60% of servers, 70% of Web servers and 95% of all supercomputers are Linux-based! more>>

For avid readers who can't find the time to visit their local library or struggle to carry giant tomes of awesomeness around with them, eBooks have become a convenient way to consume books. Whether it's on a Kindle, a Nook or in an app on your phone, eBooks are the ultimate in portability. Sometimes, however, it can be difficult to find the book you want in a format you can read. more>>

Everyone has wasted an afternoon on YouTube clicking through videos of talking cats, screaming goats and bad-lip-reading renditions of popular movies. Heck, there are plenty of YouTube videos of me doing odd and silly things as well. (Does anyone remember 'Buntu Family Theater?) For important family videos, however, I much prefer to control my own data. more>>

A friend who works in one of the big banks recently told me that any new-fangled approach to identity and payments is going to have a hard time getting traction while credit cards continue to work as well as they do. "Using credit cards is too easy, too normal, too entrenched in Business As Usual", he said. They used to say the same thing about Windows. more>>

Chocolate in My Peanut Butter

Programming always has been that "thing" people did that I never understood. more>>

As I write this, NASA has just passed another milestone in releasing its work to the Open Source community. A press release came out announcing the release on April 10, 2014, of a new catalog of NASA software that is available as open source. This new catalog includes both older software that was previously available, along with new software being released for the first time. more>>

Silicon Mechanics, Inc., announced this week that Wayne State University (WSU) is the recipient of the company’s 3rd Annual Research Cluster Grant. This includes donation of a complete high-performance compute cluster from Silicon Mechanics and several of its partners. more>>

They say you never forget your first computer. For some of us, it was a Commodore 64 or an Apple IIe. For others, it was a Pentium 233 running Windows 95. Regardless of the hardware, the fond memories of wonder and excitement are universal. For me, I'll never forget the night my father brought home our first computer, a Tandy 1000. more>>

Once in a while someone points out a POSIX violation in Linux. Often the answer is to fix the violation, but sometimes Linus Torvalds decides that the POSIX behavior is broken, in which case they keep the Linux behavior, but they might build an additional POSIX compatibility layer, even if that layer is slower and less efficient. more>>

No matter how much I love Plex, there's still nothing that comes close to XBMC for usability when it comes to watching your network media on a television. I've probably written a dozen articles on Plex during the last few years, so you know that's tough for me to admit. more>>

I've always loved PHPMyAdmin for managing MySQL databases. It's Web-based, fairly robust and as powerful as I've ever needed. Basically, it's awesome. Today, however, I discovered something better than awesome: Adminer. Although it is conceptually identical to PHPMyAdmin, it is far simpler and far more powerful. How can it be both? more>>

I've never once made a model rocket. I've always wanted to, but apart from "tube with explodey rocket part", I really didn't know where to start with designing. I recently found an open-source application that should help me with my lack of rocket science know-how: OpenRocket. more>>