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A small group of individuals and some small, specialized companies [see CalCars poster in right hand column] have been gaining increasing public visibility in their push to entice major auto manufacturers to begin producing plug-in hybrid electric vehicles [PHEV]. More recently some very large corporate entities have joined the chorus, Southern California Edison will be using Ford Escape vehicles and even PE&G will see power sold back from one Google test fleet vehicles. In contrast, the major automobile manufactures stumbled unintentionally into the spot light.

It is with an eerie, but rejuvenating, sense of deja vu that I just received word of what may be the first public demonstration in support of open standards. And what could be more of a ratification of the concept of Civil ICT Standards than the news that ordinary citizens are taking to the streets in their defense?

The Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) runs Linux, but getting it to run well requires some tweaking. The first part introduced features and benefits, and Part 2 takes a look at where all the memory goes in the PS3 and how to reclaim it, along with what significant things can impact a PS3 system's performance running Linux.

Smart cards and digital signatures are presented as among the most important components of e-government in Europe, but they are still far from being an effective, Linux-friendly solution to reduce administrative and business costs. But the same tools may become a way to make the general public use or support Free Software.

Many people know that free and open source software (FOSS) plays a role in creating the technical infrastructure of developing nations and in preserving endangered languages. With the Orca screen reader, FOSS takes on the new role of providing access to computers and the Internet to people with disabilities. The project is quickly catching up with proprietary accessibility options, and is already being widely deployed as a low-cost alternative.

The author of this article, Joe Kissell, is a man after my own heart. He doesn’t care for instant messaging, and doesn’t have much use for cell phones either. Mr. Kissell writes:

“The introvert trait of not dealing well with interruptions comes into play in a couple of different ways with IM.”

Nobody, but nobody works efficiently with interruptions and juggling multiple tasks...

But what will be the outcome of all this? Let me outline the following steps in Microsoft’s strategy in regard of standardization. This can be described as a pincer movement. First, Microsoft will try to kill ODF....Next in line will be XPS. If you don’t know what XPS is, check it out from the source. Yes, you got that right. PDF reloaded. Now with more patents, OOXML dependencies, and legal traps.

MegaLap, a notebook computer from ZaReason, a company that builds and sells computer systems that run Ubuntu, is bound to give its owner bragging rights at any LAN party, especially with how loud the system can get. It has the hallmarks of on-the-go computing, while performing comparably to a desktop gaming system.

Ubuntu, the fastest-growing version of Linux, is starting to attract interest from the managed services industry. One prime example: Untangle, which develops security solutions for managed service providers, is preparing to add support for Ubuntu within the next few months, MSPmentor has learned.

After years in the shadows, the open source Python programming language is becoming increasingly mainstream. There are more users and more tools. Backers of Python now argue that Python is ready for the enterprise. But in a programming world already filled with languages such as Java, .NET, PHP and Ruby competing for share, is Python getting a bite? Its backers think so.

Yahoo!'s Board of Directors issued a letter to Microsoft stating "we have continued to make clear that we are not opposed to a transaction with Microsoft if it is in the best interests of our stockholders."

One of you had the absolute audacity to email me and state that, in fact, Microsoft isn't even aware of the FOSS and Linux effort...that these Open Source entities are simply existing along side of MS...Microsoft isn't particularly worried about any impact that Linux or FOSS has on it's market.

Ever since Sun anteed up a billion in cold cash for MySQL a couple months back, we wondered when the next shoe would drop. Recently, EnterpriseDB announced that IBM was one of several venture backers to fund its third $10m round of financing. At first glance, this appears to be IBM's response to Sun. But it isn't.

The ultraportable Asus Eee laptop has been getting a lot of good press recently. Now the company is capitalising on its popularity among Linux users by releasing a software developer kit for the platform. And the good news is that you don’t need even need an Eee to play around with the SDK.

These days, you can grab RSS feeds off just about any site and aggregate them into reading lists, pop them into a widget, or post them on your blog. Here's a look at three very different feed-related plugins for your WordPress blog: FeedSnap, RSS Stream, and FeedEntryHeader.

Want to be an Asterisk guru? Then sign up for the first bootcamp to be run by Asterisk gurus Connection Telecom. The five-day course costs a whopping R23 400 but if you can get your company to cover the fees the course will be well worth attending. Connection Telecom has been involved with Asterisk since it first broke onto the IT scene. Rob Lith, director of Connection Telecom, says this training course will assist participants with gaining a high-level knowledge of Asterisk and its potential, with particular focus on the SIP network.

Welcome to this year's 14th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! It was slow news week for distributions, but developers have been quite busy. There were lots of developmental releases last week, including a Slackware 12.1 release candidate. openSUSE and Mandriva announced discontinued support, Gentoo released a beta, and a Debian developer is trying to bring back the Debian Weekly News. I took a look at the new Dreamlinux 3.0 release and while it remained pretty and added some new features, I had mixed results. All this and more in this issue of DistroWatch Weekly - happy reading!

Want Rails to interact with YUI, Yahoo’s web user interface? Then make sure you’re at the Bandwidth Barn in Cape Town on Wednesday 9 April. The Cape Town Ruby Brigade will be hosting a talk by Peter Retief on the YUI API and how it can be coupled with Rails.

Joel Spolsky recently published a very insightful piece called "Martian Headsets". The core of his article is about the standards compliance of the upcoming Internet Explorer 8. IE8 presents a problem because, although it is pretty standards compliant, it renders a lot of websites quite badly. The IE8 team presented a controversial solution that would have IE8 render all pages as if it were IE7 unless the developer specifically told IE that it would render well under IE8. Web developers rejected this solution and the IE team reverted their decision. Joel argues that whatever Microsoft ends up choosing on this issue, it will be a bad choice because there is no right choice. I think that there is a third option. In this article I will present three changes that Microsoft could implement that will allow Internet Explorer 8 to be fully standards compliant and ensures that the vast majority of websites will work just fine.

It's not every day some back-water blogger swindles his way into one of the most 733T Linux Collaborations to come down the Python Compiler. Since ya'll are buddies with this guy, take a look at the attendees list and see who you want to pester about something. Helios is just the guy to do it for you. Just leave your question or point in the comments and he'll do his best to get 'er done.