In the last couple months I have posted my disgust about two different online education systems that are being used at various colleges around the United States. My dislike for these systems stems from the fact that even though they are web based, they do not adhere to Web Standards. Today I would like to talk about an online education system that is accessible to all students, not just those running Microsoft Windows.

When I first started with graphics - I plotted pixels onto the screen by calculating a memory address and then poking the corresponding value. Times have changed since then. My murky history contains gwbasic, STOS, HiSoft Basic (compiled!), VisualBasic (numerous versions) until I found C and AES (on the Atari ST), Win16 (that is Windows 3.1) and even Presentation Manager on OS/2 (in the pre-Warp days).

Organizers of the Southern California Linux Expo 9x have announced that the Call for Papers for SCALE 9x opens Wednesday, Sept. 1, with five speaker tracks. With the continued growth of Open Source software in business, SCALE will address the need for system management knowledge by adding a speaker track focused on system administration. Combined with the two specialized tracks -- Beginners and Developers -- and the two general interest tracks, SCALE 9x will have content for every attendee.

In the first installment of this article we looked at getting Google's Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A) downloaded and installed on your Android phone. We examined the basics of writing scripts using Python and even included a short script to set a few of the profile settings. This time we'll take a look at some of the sample scripts found on the SL4A website and talk about how you might write a script of your own.

As of Red Hat's news last week, there are now four competing standards for building so-called open source clouds. It's shaping up to be quite a battle of the titans. Contenders are: Amazon Web Services via Eucalyptus Systems; Rackspace and OpenStack, Cloud.com and Cloudstack; Red Hat's DeltaCloud. Companies like Intel, Dell, Citrix, HP, IBM, Cisco are all lining up behind one or more. But some experts says that the ultimate standard may not even have shown itself yet.

PC World - One of the most confusing things for the newcomer to Linux is how many distributions, or versions, of the operating system there are. Ubuntu is the one most people have heard of, but there are hundreds of others as well, each offering some variant on the basic Linux theme.

NewsFactor - Oracle's suit against Google for the use of Java in its Android portable operating system continues to reverberate through the open-source movement. In the newest development, Google has declined to participate in the upcoming JavaOne conference, an event formerly hosted by Java creator Sun Microsystems and now run by Sun's new owner, Oracle.

PC World - The managing board of enterprise open-source software company Red Hat has elected a retired U.S. Army officer, General Henry Hugh Shelton, to serve as chairman, the company announced Monday. Shelton takes the place of Matthew Szulik, who was the former CEO of Red Hat.