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"I skipped the public announcements for versions 5 and 6, but here is 7 :)," noted Vegard Nossum, announcing the latest release of his kmemcheck patch, currently applying against the 2.6.25-rc8 kernel. Vegard noted he is now hoping to get the patch merged into the mainline kernel during the upcoming 2.6.26 merge window.

Last week Weekly Wire sent Roblimo to San Francisco for the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC). While there, he had a chance to talk briefly with Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth even though Mark was getting full "rock star" treatment from an adoring crowd and was totally mobbed by press and fans whenever he showed his face.

Get a demonstration on how to use Acegi to secure access to JavaBeans in JavaServer Faces (JSF) applications. You can configure secure beans in a variety of ways, including using Acegi-secured inversion-of-control (IOC) beans directly in your JSF tags.

Altimeters... lie. For those of you who are a bit uneasy about flying, this bit of news may not make you feel any better. Nor will this piece of information: most analog instruments on airplanes are prone to quite a bit of error. Yet for over a hundred years, these instruments were more than enough to get most aircraft safely from place to place.

Granular Linux is a desktop-oriented distribution based on PCLinuxOS. Its primary goals are to be easy to use and user-friendly. With the new preview release of version 1.0, Granular has come a long way toward achieving these goals, and becoming a unique distribution with its own benefits and problems.

Observers (all two of you) may have noticed a flurry of commits in the systhread cvs repo at SourceForge. The enlightenment transform utility etu and libpcab based pktutils underwent major changes over the last two weeks.

Max McLaren sounds very satisified these days. Not to say that the man who's been managing Red Hat's affairs in Australia and New Zealand for nearly two years has sounded disconsolate at any time when I've spoken to him. But right now he has very good reason to be feeling a trifle smug - Red Hat recently released an extraordinary set of figures for the first US quarter.

With OpenOffice.org 2.4 just released, OpenOffice.org 3.0 (OOo3) has already passed its feature freeze, and is scheduled for release in September. Based on recent development builds, what can you expect? In the Base, Draw, and Math applications, very little change, at least so far. But in the core programs of Writer, Impress, and Calc, some long-awaited new features are arriving. Combined with the improvements in the charting system that are the major feature of the 2.4 release, these new features promise to increase both usability and functionality, although some of the changes do not go far enough.

Think about this next time you upgrade your PC: toxic metals from old electronic goods are finding their way into school grounds in China.

To make computers relate to the real world, we need sensors and analog-to-digital conversion. An exercise bicycle is a great example of how to interface a computer and a DB2 database to sensor data. All the steps are presented in an easy-to-follow format.

Web-based automatic translators such as translate.google.com are great for getting the gist of what a document is saying, but it can be cumbersome to have to open a new tab in your browser, load that URL, and copy and paste the text you want to translate into your browser. The twandgtw project allows you to get language translations directly from the Linux command line using either local dictionaries or online services.

I generally don't run beta releases, let alone review them, but I'm having a hard time waiting to find out what Ubuntu 8.04 LTS -- nicknamed Hardy Heron and set for an April 24 release -- is all about.

For the up and coming distros of our time, publicity can be a wonderful thing. With that, I am announcing a way to make it easier to get the publicity needed so that they can gain interest from other potential users. Best of all, waiting periods are very slim.

In an ironic twist of fate, Microsoft's own End User License Agreement could force the software giant to pay taxes in India for selling their software due to their products being "licensed, not sold."

Gernot Heiser, professor of operating systems at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has stated that Windows and Linux will remain as the future of desktop and server operating systems. In an interview at the recent Linux.conf.au in Melbourne, Heiser said "the operating systems of the future will be called Windows and Linux, no matter what they look like". "You can't really introduce new operating systems in the desktop and server space", he added.

If you ask yourself 'What am I supposed to do when I want to find a file, if I am using XFCE, and Thunar is my conscious choice as the file manager?', then ask no more and easily find stuff in Thunar using Catfish!

European public administrations that want to use software that is offered for free, such as Open Source software, do not need to organise a call for tender. This is the conclusion of the Dutch government project NOIV, after studying European rules on tenders. The NOIV published an English translation of its guide for ICT buyers in the public and semi-public sectors, 'The acquisition of (open-source) software', on its website this week.

In my previous post about last week’s Microsoft Technology Summit, I talked a little bit about the structure of the event and the overtures that Microsoft seems to be making towards the Open Source community. Some of my esteemed industry colleagues feel that Microsoft is never to be trusted, that they are a snake in the grass and a dangerous aggressor, and they are out to crush anyone who opposes them at any cost.

KDE e.V and Wikimedia Deutschland have opened a shared office in Frankfurt, Germany. As two organizations that share similar goals and organizational challenges, they hope that working out of the same space will strengthen and expand their links to the Free Culture community, as well as allowing them to share resources, experience and infrastructure.

Ubuntu Linux was the only system left unscathed in a multi-platform hacking competition last week, but does that mean it is more secure? Apple's Leopard OS lasted 30 second, Windows Vista Ultimate lasted until the third day, but Ubuntu's Linux distribution alone was left secure at the end of the "Pwn to Own contest" at CanSecWest security conference held in Vancouver. James Turner, a security analyst from IBRS said that "in this particular instance, which supports the conclusion that Ubuntu is more secure".