red

Blue-sky driving in the Saturn Sky Red Line

While much of the county is suffering blizzards and ice storms, we counted our sunny stars today and hit the dry, open road for a first look at the 2007 Saturn Sky Red Line. Like the Pontiac Solstice, with which it shares its platform, the Sky soft-top roadster exudes bold body styling. Sleek lines, a bulging hood, and aggressively arched front fenders all give the Sky a mini-Batmobile character, an impression underlined by the fact that our tester came in onyx black (that's black to you and me).

As its name suggests, the Sky Red Line is a performance-tuned … Read more

Red Hat's JBoss revenue edges toward goal

Red Hat said its acquisition of the JBoss open-source Java server software would mean $22 million to $27 million in new revenue from June 2, 2006, when the acquisition was completed, and February 27, 2007, when the Linux seller's quarter ends. The company's quarterly report, released Tuesday, indicates that the company will just make that goal.

In the most recent quarter, JBoss generated $7.8 million for the company, an 11 percent increase over the $7 million from the first quarter in the Red Hat tent. "Extrapolating these numbers puts JBoss on track for about $22 million … Read more

Red Hat changes Fedora course--again

Red Hat has once again updated its constant effort to create a free Linux version that's best suited to the company's own goals and the workings of the open-source movement.

Red Hat programmer Bill Nottingham last week announced new features for Fedora 7, including a unification of the Red Hat-controlled Core components and the ancillary Extras. The move reverses the Extras direction, which Red Hat hoped in 2005 would lighten its programming load.

"Starting with Fedora 7, there is no more Core, and no more Extras; there is only Fedora. One single repository, built in the community … Read more

Must-have item for car phone addicts

If you think you need one of Novomax's "Bluetooth Soundstations," you're spending far too much time on the phone while behind the wheel. According to the product description on its Web site, the car kit "displays caller ID, battery status, phone book downloading, etc." (We can only speculate what the "etc." stands for. Doing laundry?)

It's frightening that some people would find the need to have all this information constantly within their line of sight while they're supposed to have their eyes on the road. And as if that's … Read more

Videos in your living room with SofaTube

There seem to have been a ton of video-browsing tools lately, but few have managed to change the user experience for those with computers doubling as entertainment centers. I use my PC for both work and play utilizing Windows Media Center, and navigating through videos with a remote beats using a mouse when you're lounging. SofaTube from Red Kawa (makers of several video conversion applications) is an attempt to create an easy way for people to enjoy video clips on their entertainment center PC or browser-enabled video game console.

On the PC side, SofaTube works very well. You're … Read more

Closer ties for Mozilla, Linux programmers

Programmers from Red Hat, Novell and the Mozilla Foundation have pledged closer cooperation to ease technical obstacles that exist today, work planned to result in versions of the Firefox browser tailored for different versions of Linux.

"The browser on Linux is currently in a sad state of affairs," said Red Hat's Chris Aillon on his blog Monday, complaining that different versions of Linux incorporate different variations of the browser source code and that the generic version released by Mozilla won't run on newer Linux versions such as Fedora Core 6, released in October.

Likewise, Mozilla programmer Mike Connor … Read more

The dark side of empowered users: Bug flood

The open-source community prides itself on the direct feedback developers get from their software's users. But there's an ugly side, too: the bug flood.

When Red Hat released its new Fedora Core 6 on October 24, one day before Canonical released its new "Edgy Eft" Ubuntu, users chimed in with plenty of gripes. One developer, Andre Klapper, illustrated the phenomenon on his blog with a graph of the bugs reported in the Nautilus File Manager.

The number of bugs reported jumped north of 140 per day before dipping down to a more moderate rate of about … Read more

'Tis the season to Crave: Erica Ogg's picks

NOTE: From now through December, every few days a different Crave expert will be posting his or her top 10 gadget picks for the holidays. See what we crave, and maybe you'll get some ideas! Here's our seventh installment.

Erica Ogg is an unapologetic Dodgers fan living in San Francisco, has found herself hopelessly addicted to Starbucks chai lattes (with 2 percent milk), and readily admits to being a history geek. And no, she has nothing to do with Ogg Vorbis.

1. LG Chocolate. So the first version was panned by a lot of critics, but the second … Read more

Red Hat releases second RHEL 5 beta

Red Hat on Friday released a second beta version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5. The new version's biggest change is the inclusion of Xen virtualization software, which lets a machine run multiple operating systems simultaneously to increase efficiency.

The new version also includes support for quad-core processors, better laptop support, and improvements to the SELinux security software, Red Hat said.

A company representative said the product is expected to ship in early 2007. Initially, Red Hat hoped to release the software this year, but in recent months gave itself more leeway.

The beta also includes technology previews … Read more

Evil egg empire expands exponentially

Her penguin fixation aside, we have to agree with Craving colleague Caroline McCarthy in her stand against the "color-changey phenomenon." In fact, the issue has become increasingly dire ever since.

Readers of this space will note that we have been warning of egg-based subversion for some time, usually under the guise of audio devices. Then this week, what began as a misguided psychedelic revival crossed into the sinister realm of the Ovo Underground with these color-morphing eggs from HouseOfRave.com. The "Oggz," as they are known, are supposedly harmless accent lights that "change color like … Read more