StarDict là dự án mã mở phát triển phục vụ mục tiêu tra cứu từ điển các loại, có sự tham gia tích cực của cộng đồng người Việt Nam trong việc hoàn thiện danh mục từ, ngữ nghĩa.

Hiện tại, phiên bản tiếng Việt đã có các từ điển Anh-Việt, Việt-Anh, Pháp-Việt, Việt-Pháp, Đức-Việt, Việt-Đức, Nga-Việt, Nauy-Việt và từ điển từ vựng, ngôn ngữ tiếng Việt.

StarDict được xây dựng chạy trên cả Linux và Windows.

Để cài đặt trên Linux, mà cụ thể là hệ Fedora Core 9 chúng ta đang sử dụng, thực hiện theo các bước sau:

1. Cài đặt phần mềm StarDict: yum install stardict
2. Cài đặt bộ từ điển tiếng Việt tải về từ http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Dictionaries_misc.php

Bộ dữ liệu từ điển tiếng Việt hiện đã được download về lưu tại: OpenSource/utilities/stardict

Xin vui lòng liên hệ với tôi nếu cần trợ giúp.

Nhân viên hỗ trợ kỹ thuật thường phải rất kiên nhẫn mới có thể bình tĩnh trước những thắc mắc đủ kiểu từ phía người sử dụng, chẳng hạn như cần “sắp xếp lại bàn phím theo thứ tự abc”.

Giới IT vẫn truyền nhau câu chuyện rằng một cô gái “tóc vàng hoe” đã bối rối khi nhận được thông báo: “Press any key to continue” (Nhấn phím bất kỳ để tiếp tục) bởi cô không tìm thấy phím “Any” nào trên keyboard.

Hãng tư vấn Robert Half Technology đã phỏng vấn gần 1.400 giám đốc thông tin tại Mỹ và nhận thấy họ cũng từng gặp những thắc mắc na ná như vậy, chẳng hạn: “Sao tôi không thể cắm chuột không dây vào máy tính?”, “Cậu xác lập lại (reset) Internet cho tôi với” hoặc “Tôi có thể tải phần mềm theo dõi UFO (vật thể bay không xác định) ở đâu?”…

Nhiều người rối lên vì “chồn ăn mất cáp”, nhờ lắp cáp TV vào máy tính, hoặc thần tượng hóa các kỹ thuật viên, coi họ là siêu nhân có thể xử lý mọi vấn đề như “Con gái tôi khóa cửa phòng tắm, cậu mở khóa giúp được không?” hay “Tình hình thời tiết năm sau sẽ thế nào nhỉ?”.

Không ít người sử dụng nhầm lẫn ổ CD-ROM với giá để đồ uống và nhân viên IT thường xuyên nhận được điện thoại thông báo “khay để tách cafe trên PC không bật ra”.

Katherine Spencer Lee, Giám đốc điều hành của công ty Robert Half Technology, cho hay trước những yêu cầu như thế, nhân viên hỗ trợ kỹ thuật cần có kỹ năng và biết kiềm chế để không “phát khùng”.

Lê Nguyên (theo The Inquirer)

Combination of Colosa’s ProcessMaker open source BPM – workflow with KnowledgeTree’s document management software delivers powerful integrated tool to small businesses

Cambridge, MA and Cape Town, South Africa – March 24, 2008 – Open source application developers Colosa and KnowledgeTree have announced a ‘mashup’ of their web-based applications (ProcessMaker and KnowledgeTree document management software) to help small to mid-sized businesses handle, manage and retrieve vital company documents such as contracts, approval letters, or applications.

The combination of the ProcessMaker business process management (BPM) software, which simplifies workflow through the automation of paper-based processes, with KnowledgeTree’s powerful open source document management software has delivered a tool that will allow businesses to bring together workflow and document management capabilities to design and manage business processes, and to seamlessly file, store and retrieve mission-critical documents.

The mashup, completed with ProcessMaker Open Source v1.0 and KnowledgeTree Version: 3.5.2 (Community Edition), is installable for both Linux and Windows through a plug-in that comes bundled with ProcessMaker Open Source. The 100kb file is executed in the Setup menu’s Plug-in option. The plug-in will automatically be installed, and the user will fill in the setup with credentials and URL paths for the KnowledgeTree server. It is available at https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=215099

Both applications are web-based, AJAX-enabled applications based on PHP, which made the integration seamless. Colosa’s ProcessMaker is an open source, robust BPM tool built with SMEs in mind, to automate document-intensive, approval-based processes across systems including finance, HR and operations. Functionalities include creating and sharing workflows, customizing forms, managing processes and enhancing reporting. With document management capabilities added in through the mashup with KnowledgeTree, users can now not only design and manage business processes, but they can then file, store and retrieve their mission critical documents.

KnowledgeTree is an open source document management provider that provides feature-rich, easy to use enterprise document management software for use by corporations, government institutions and small to medium-sized businesses. KnowledgeTree’s open source architecture lowers the total cost of ownership through providing the flexibility to integrate the software with existing infrastructure. KnowledgeTree has built a large dedicated community around its product, with over 450,000 downloads to date, 30,000 registered community members and 67 community-run projects.

Brian Reale, CEO of Colosa said, “This mashup shows the vitality and flexibility of web-based applications and how integration can deliver new and innovative services that are demanded by the market.”

He continued, “It made sense to integrate KnowledgeTree’s document management application with ProcessMaker for several reasons. First, the two applications share a similar architecture, which makes it simple to integrate and manage. Second, KnowledgeTree serves the same target market: small to medium businesses that are looking for a way to simplify and yet speed up core business processes. Finally, users that need document management functionality within the ProcessMaker application can now meet their infrastructure needs and users who need to manage their business processes in KnowledgeTree can do so as well.”

Daniel Chalef, COO of KnowledgeTree added, “Colosa’s ProcessMaker is perfectly-designed for SME customers that want a better way to handle business processes and workflow. The features with the application represent an opportunity to add additional value to our customers. ProcessMaker has unique functionality in the open source BPM space, in that it is entirely web-based, and includes two modules to design and manage business processes.

He concluded, “ProcessMaker’s open source heritage fits in with our philosophy of empowering enterprises with low costs and high functionality and enables us to deliver a feature-rich and compelling integration.”

About Colosa
Colosa is a developer of software solutions that enable companies to simplify workflow through the capture and automation of business processes.

The company’s flagship product, ProcessMaker (www.processmaker.com) is available in two versions, a free open source application called ProcessMaker OSS and an Enterprise version called ProcessMaker Enterprise. Both enable SMEs to automate document intensive, approval-based processes across systems including finance, HR and operations. ProcessMaker is an AJAX enabled, SOA, web-based application that allows users across single and multiple sites to create and share workflows, customize forms, manage processes, and enhance reporting. ProcessMaker OSS is available for download at http://sourceforge.net/projects/processmaker/ and both versions are available at www.processmaker.com.

Colosa was founded in 2000 and has customers in local and central government, retail and finance. Colosa is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts with offices in Coral Gables, FL; La Paz, Bolivia; and Lima, Peru. For more information visit www.colosa.com

About KnowledgeTree
KnowledgeTree’s vision is to make document management simple. With no vendor lock-in and with source code readily available, KnowledgeTree provides a more flexible, easy to use, and cost-effective alternative to proprietary document management applications.

The application’s focus on ease of use and strong Microsoft Windows and Office integration toolset has made it a compelling, high-value document management solution for all organizations. The web-based and AJAX-enabled application is built on the popular open source LAMP (Apache/MySQL/PHP) stack and a community edition is released under the GPLv3. Commercial editions are available as single-click installers for Microsoft Windows and Linux, a software appliance and a novel Software-as-a-Service application running on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.

Commercial customers include the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, DHL Global Mail, Société Générale Group, the State of Georgia Department of Audits, the European Space Agency, Cable & Wireless, Mazda Motor Europe and Decathlon Stores.

To download a trial of KnowledgeTree Premium, visit http://www.knowledgetree.com/try-now

To learn more about KnowledgeTree Community Edition, and to participate in community activities, visit http://www.knowledgetree.com/community

Source: http://www.knowledgetree.com/press/processmaker-knowledgetree-bpm-workflow-document-management

I read the below quotes, and I wanted to share them with everyone

1. “To be able to choose between proprietary software packages is to be able to choose your master. Freedom means not having a master. And in the area of computing, freedom means not using proprietary software.”
-Richard M. Stallman

2. “Software is like sex: it’s better when it’s free.”
-Linus Torvalds

3. “Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. ‘Don’t bother us with politics’, respond those who don’t want to learn.”
-Richard M. Stallman

4. “Software patents are a huge potential threat to the ability of people to work together on open source. Making it easier for companies and communities that have patents to make those patents available in a common pool for people to use is one way to try to help developers deal with the threat.”
-Linus Torvalds

5. “If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.”
-Richard M. Stallman

6. “One of the questions I’ve always hated answering is how do people make money in open source. And I think that Caldera and Red Hat — and there are a number of other Linux companies going public — basically show that yes, you can actually make money in the open-source area.”
-Linus Torvalds

7. “Control over the use of one’s ideas really constitutes control over other people’s lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.”
-Richard M. Stallman

8. “It just makes it even harder for people to even approach the (open source) side, when they then end up having to worry about … public humiliation.”
-Linus Torvalds

9. “I founded the free software movement, a movement for freedom to cooperate. Open source was a reaction against our idealism. We are still here and the open-source people have not wiped us out.”
-Richard M. Stallman

10. “When it comes to software, I much prefer free software, because I have very seldom seen a program that has worked well enough for my needs, and having sources available can be a life-saver.”
-Linus Torvalds

11. “If you focus your mind on the freedom and community that you can build by staying firm, you will find the strength to do it.”
-Richard M. Stallman

12. “Anybody who tells me I can’t use a program because it’s not open source, go suck on rms. I’m not interested. 99% of that I run tends to be open source, but that’s _my_ choice, dammit.”
-Linus Torvalds

13. “’Free software’ is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ‘free’ as in ‘free speech,’ not as in ‘free beer’.”
-Richard M. Stallman

14. “I’m doing a free operating system just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu for 386 (486) AT clones.”
-Linus Torvalds

15. “Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air.”
-Richard M. Stallman

Please if you have quote , share it with us.

Many businesses are turning to Voice over IP (VoIP) to save money on infrastructure and communications costs, but just ripping out your existing phone system and replacing it with VoIP will not work. VoIP systems require IP phones or analog telephone adapters to allow your existing phones to work. If equipment costs are stopping you from experimenting with VoIP, softphones can provide an inexpensive way for businesses to get up and running with VoIP, as I recently discovered by putting Kiax, Linphone, Twinkle, and CounterPath’s X-Lite to the test.

A softphone runs on your computer and provides all the features and functionality of a regular phone. I tested the four Linux-based programs using an Asterisk server and multiple Linux workstations on an internal LAN. Kiax, Linphone, and Twinkle are open source. X-Lite is not, but is available as a free download.

Three out of the four support Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), a signalling protocol under development by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to establish VoIP connections. With its IETF backing, SIP is quickly becoming the standard protocol for VoIP. Kiax is exception. It uses Digium’s Inter Asterisk Exchange (IAX) protocol. The main advantage of IAX over SIP is its transparency to firewalls. IAX softphones work behind firewalls without the need for external proxy servers or the need to change firewall settings.

In addition to a signalling protocol, VoIP endpoints need to specify codec software that turns analog voice communication into digital packets for transmission over the network and back again at the receiver’s end. The choice of codec depends on the bandwidth available. The codec that gives the highest voice quality is the G.711u, which is the standard codec that traditional plain old telephone service (POTS) providers use. G.711u provides high voice quality but requires high bandwidth. Because we did our testing on a switched 100Mbps LAN — in other words, a very fast network — we used the G.711u codec with all the products, and found voice quality was not a distinguishing issue. Under these conditions, they all delivered roughly the same voice quality.

Let’s take a look at what does set these softphones apart.

Kiax

What makes Kiax stand out is its simple interface. Making and receiving calls is intuitive. Kiax sports a call register that lists all calls made and received. A nice touch is the ability to sort calls in the register based on whether they were incoming, outgoing, or missed. There is not much more to Kiax’s interface; simplicity is a good thing sometimes.

The major drawback for Kiax is its lack of SIP support. If there is an Asterisk server between Kiax (or another IAX client) and a SIP client, everything will work out. If not, forget it. Kiax can talk to SIP clients only through an Asterisk server.

Kiax has packages available for Debian, Red Hat, and SUSE, as well as a plain tarball with the Kiax binary. I opted for the tarball, and installation went without a hitch.

Linphone

Linphone is more than four years old, making it the grandfather of the bunch. Linphone is distributed only as source code; no binary packages are available from the project. Linphone requires the libosip2 package, which is included in Linphone’s download directory. An optional package providing support for the iLBC codec is there as well.

Along with meeting your VoIP needs, Linphone also has a simple instant messenger application built in. This eliminates the need to have two separate applications open for basic communication tasks. The default interface is simple, but offers power users a little more, which you can access by clicking on the “show more” check box in the main window.

Linphone’s biggest strength is its outstanding codec support. It not only supports multiple bit-rates for Speex, it even supports the very poor quality, but extremely low bandwidth, DoD 1015 codec. With all the codecs it supports out of the box, it is surprising that it requires a patch for iLBC support.

Linphone was not without its share of problems, all of which can be traced to the fact that I was upgrading to the latest release and not doing a fresh install. Version 1.1 requires Speex. That should not have been a problem, as I already had Speex installed. Of course, it required the latest version of Speex. No problem, I had the latest Speex installed. But wait, Linphone will not install without the speexenc program in /usr/bin. The only problem is that the Speex installation places it in /usr/local/bin. This is not a difficult problem to solve, but it’s something the user should not have to take care of.

The other problem after upgrading is that Linphone would no longer authenticate to my Asterisk server. Removing the password requirement from the Asterisk’s SIP configuration file did the trick. This may be fine on a LAN where you trust the users, but it’s probably not a good idea if you will be connecting to the outside world.

Despite the problems with upgrading, Linphone was otherwise rock-solid, as you might expect from a product that has been around for a long time.

Twinkle

Twinkle is the most ambitious of the group. At this time, Twinkle is only available as source code. It also requires GNU Common C++ and GNU ccRTP, and you can get both from its main download page. Once the requirements are out of the way, Twinkle installs without a hitch.

Twinkle supports a long list of features and has the most professional feel of the open source softphones. It supports two line appearances. If you are talking on line one and another call comes in, you have the option of placing the first call on hold and switching to line two to take the second. The User Profile section for account setup is the most intuitive and the best out of the four.

Twinkle comes with a few added services to simplify the user’s life. If you do not feel like talking, the Do Not Disturb feature will generate a SIP “480 Temporarily Not Available” response to anyone trying to call you. If you enjoy talking no matter who is calling, the Auto Answer feature connects all calls without your interaction. My favorite Twinkle feature is Call Redirection. With it, you can send calls to another user. Redirection can be set up for all calls, or for calls that come in when your lines are busy, or if you do not answer the call within a certain amount of time.

What’s not to like about Twinkle? Well, it lacks an address book and call history reports, though these features are planned for future releases. Twinkle is definitely a softphone to keep your eye on.

CounterPath X-Lite

Last, but not least, is X-Lite, the only proprietary softphone of the bunch. Although it’s not open source, it is free as in beer for personal or commercial use. Unlike the other softphones in this review, X-Lite is also available for Windows and Mac OS X. The Linux version is provided as a tarball with the X-Lite binary. Just download, unzip, and run.

X-Lite’s Audio Tuning Wizard runs when you start it for the first time. This is a feature the other softphones should adopt. It allows you to confirm that X-Lite is playing nice with your sound card and microphone. It even calibrates your microphone to adjust for the ambient noise level around the computer. These settings can be adjusted at any time by right-clicking the X-Lite client.

X-Lite’s biggest strength is the usefulness of its interface. Without accessing any menus you can adjust the speaker volume, adjust the microphone volume, and choose which codecs are enabled. Another advantage is its three line appearances, one more than Twinkle supports. As far as features go, X-Lite has just about everything you can expect in a softphone.

Well, almost. While its interface is simple, its menu options are not. X-Lite has an overwhelming number of settings. For example, why have a menu option to disable codecs when they can be toggled on and off directly from the main interface? Another downside is that some of the features the other softphones offer, like Auto-Answer and Do Not Disturb, are locked. I only found this out after trying to enable them with no luck. For those features to work, you must purchase X-Lite’s successor, CounterPath’s eyeBeam video and softphone. An audio-only version runs $30, and no Linux versions of eyeBeam are available at this time.

Which one wins?

Each of the four softphones has pros and cons. Kiax is mean and lean but works only in an Asterisk environment. Linphone is stable and mature, but may not be wise to deploy in an Asterisk environment due to authentication issues. Twinkle has a lot to offer, but is a relative newcomer to the game. X-Lite works on multiple platforms, but its free version comes crippled, and its paid version isn’t available on Linux.

Regardless of their individual issues, one thing is for sure: Each of these free softphones can help you evaluate whether VoIP is right for your company without expensive additional equipment.

Paul Virijevich is working to eliminate the “Linux consultants cost more” TCO myth. He recently started a consultancy providing cost-effective open source solutions to small businesses.

Softphone protocol and codec support

Source: http://www.linux.com/feature/48393