open-source

Those schools that are using Dance Dance Revolution to get their kids into shape aren't the only ones who've found a great use for the game, but it's doubtful Dance Dance Immolation will ever make it to a gymnasium near you.

Created by Interpretive Arson, a fire-art group from Oakland, Calif., Dance Dance Immolation uses a freeware version of DDR melded to pilot lights, gallons of propane, and heat-resistant proximity suits. Instead of losing points, though, a single misstep gets you shot in the face with fire.

Originally developed by three friends--Jonathan Shekter, Ian Baker, and Matt Blackwell--Crispix is the name for their hacked version of open-source StepMania (download for Windows or Mac), a freeware adaptation of Dance Dance Revolution that forms the brain of Dance Dance Immolation. StepMania is not only open source, it's also multiplatform. So why was it built on a Windows XP machine?

… Read more

IBM announced Friday that it's making available as open-source the software it developed for modeling the movement of infectious diseases.

The Spatiotemporal Epidemiological Modeler (STEM), which can run on any operating system, will be available through a project run by Eclipse, the open-source development foundation, called the Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework Project.

The mapping software has customizable tools, and epidemiologists can apply their own algorithms to fit the needs of specific projects and various outbreak scenarios. Among the variables the software can include are air travel, road systems, borders and animal interaction with a disease.

It can also be … Read more

Penguins aren't generally considered the speediest animals around, but this weekend one of the birds will be zipping around the track at the Indianapolis 500. Two Linux enthusiasts have taken it upon themselves to increase the visibility of the open-source operating system by getting a penguin-adorned car into the big race.

Their grassroots effort, called Tux 500, is aimed at raising funds to sponsor a Linux-sponsored race car operated by Chastain Motorsports. While the original fundraising goal of $350,000 appears to be out of reach, as of Thursday morning, Tux 500 had collected more than $16,300, with … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Zmanda, which develops the open-source Amanda backup and recovery software, has raised $8 million in a second round of funding. Helion Venture Partners led the round, and earlier investors BlueRun Ventures and Canaan Partners participated, the company said Tuesday in conjunction with the Open Source Business Conference here.

The company plans to use the funding to expand its business and its research and development. The company sells support subscriptions to its Zmanda Network, which includes support for Amanda Enterprise and Zmanda Recovery Manager software.

LAS VEGAS--I'm here at the Interop conference, networking-geek heaven. Yesterday was Network Access Control day, so I'd be remiss if I didn't wish everyone a belated happy NAC day to start.

Yesterday's big networking news didn't break here. It came from Redmond, Wash.: Microsoft announced two partnership announcements.

First, Microsoft announced that its version of NAC called Network Access Protection would interoperate with the Trusted Network Connect (TNC) framework from the Trusted Computing Group, or TCG. Not content with a single new friend, Microsoft made a similar announcement with Juniper Networks, declaring NAP interoperability with … Read more

Sometimes we analysts have an "all sizzle and no steak" reputation. We come up with high falootin' concepts, write reports and columns, and get quoted in the media, but we don't really "do" anything.

Former executive vice president of marketing for EMC, Bob Ano, once put it to me this way: "If I make a bet on your latest 'vision' and you turn out to be wrong, I lose my job and reputation. You simply change a few PowerPoint slides and move on."

With this as background, I am proud to say that … Read more

Medical imaging specialists Aperio have broken the 4GB file size limit on the TIFF image format by creating their own format called BigTIFF and offering the format into the public domain (an amazing fact in its own right). To showcase the power of BigTIFF image resolution, Aperio has released the first terapixel image. The image shows 225 pathology slides of breast tissue and can be viewed and explored online (it looks surprisingly like a pink version of Google Earth once you start zooming in).

The image's actual file size as a compressed BigTIFF is 143GB, so don't expect … Read more

Mac users waiting for a native version of OpenOffice.org might see it sooner than they might have thought, now that Sun has thrown its support behind the project.

Sun's Philipp Lohmann announced on his blog this morning that Sun will help with the port of OpenOffice--the open-source version of Sun's StarOffice productivity suite--to Aqua, the Mac user interface. This has been an ongoing project for almost five years, ever since Sun released a beta version of OpenOffice for Mac users.

That version, however, required the installation of additional software since it wasn't built using Apple's … Read more

Do you enjoy watching Microsoft squirm as it tries to grapple with the open-source software movement? Well, there's a similar opportunity to rattle the cages of entrenched corporate powers, but this time it's the cages of hardware companies.

Bringing the open-source movement's collaborative approach to hardware is the ambition of the Fab@Home project at Cornell University. Project members hope to popularize all-purpose manufacturing devices--variously known as fabbers, 3D printers or rapid prototyping machines--and share the blueprints of the physical objects those machines can produce.

The project offers a free design for a fabber--itself a modifiable … Read more