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Actually not a FOSS story, but FOSS users may find it interesting in that it addresses resistance to forced upgrades; in this case to Windows Vista. From the article: "In many respects, Vista is like the Windows Millennium Edition that was meant to replace Windows 98 in 2000 but caused more trouble than it was worth." Ouch!

The Intel Open Source Technology Center is pleased to announce the release of version 0.1 of LatencyTOP, a tool for developers to visualize system latencies. Slow servers, Skipping audio, Jerky video --everyone knows the symptoms of latency. But to know what's really going on in the system, what's causing the latency, and how to fix it... those are difficult questions without good answers right now. LatencyTOP is a Linux tool for software developers (both kernel and userspace), aimed at identifying where system latency occurs, and what kind of operation/action is causing the latency to happen. By identifying this, developers can then change the code to avoid the worst latency hiccups.

Fabrizio Capobianco talks about how his company Funambol walks the open source tightrope, the future of free software on mobile phones, and why he is glad that the Honest Public Licence he drew up in 2006 has finally been superseded.

Linux, Mac, Windows: Every so often we get hit by a wave of nostalgia for those early computer games. The ones that were housed in huge consoles and cost 20c to play down at your corner cafe. Today is one of those days and so here is our pick for the day: Retroroids.

Amarok's very own my-wolf-eats-bugs department reports the immediate availability of the first Technology Preview of Amarok 2! This preview represents a snapshot of the current state of Amarok 2 development. After nearly a year of development, it is quite usable for some tasks at this stage. It does play music! The basic framework is there: collection, plasma, web services. They will give us the basis to make Amarok 2.0 the most innovative release yet. There is much more work to be done before the release of 2.0, we invite you to help us get there.

We’re only 5 days away from Walmart rolling out the Everex Cloudbook, but it looks like the FCC has beaten everyone to the dissecting punch by being the first to rip one apart for the internet to see.Technically, this is the Via Nanobook reference model that the Cloudbook is based upon but little is expected to change.

Sean Moss-Pultz was kind enough to answer a few questions with fsckin w/ linux. He’s got some pretty interesting answers to questions plaguing geeks and non-geeks alike, such as the eternal debate on which is better - Ninjas or Pirates? Keep reading for some candid responses from the CEO of the company behind the Dash Express GPS device and the in-development OpenMoko phone. Dash was recently named one of the top 10 startup companies to watch in 2008 by Wired Magazine.

LinkXL is a new way to capitalize on your blog's popularity. It leverages the keywords and keyphrases you've been including in your content in an effort to get a higher page rank on search engines. LinkXL is an ad broker, but the ads are not really ads, they're just links from certain words in your blog posts to an advertiser's site. Advertisers pay a set amount to get a linked keyword -- usually around $5 per link, per month. Publishers stand to make a lot of money, LinkXL executives assert, because of the sheer volume of content available on most blogs.

Asus obviously announced a shipping date like formerly only Apple did, together with the exact time. It will be this Friday, the 25th of January, at exactly 1700 (or 5pm).

Now that Sun is acquiring MySQL, which open source application provider is best positioned to launch an initial public offering? The answer is likely SugarCRM. But don't look for the IPO in the next few months. Here's why, according to MSPmentor.

While there are countless applications available to manage and view media on our computers and even some good portable solutions, getting our media to and from the television is still a challenging task for most. Neuros Technology decided to tackle this challenge in a new and exciting way. Their newest product, the Neuros OSD, is not only a media center and video recorder but is also based on Linux and has completely open source software and hardware. It's a product designed to be as versatile, open, and hackable as possible while still being easy enough to use for any living room. Whether you wish to covert your DVD's to digital files, record your favorite TV shows for your iPod, stream videos from your home network, or take it apart and rebuild it, the Neuros OSD is a low cost and versatile device that is on the forefront of the open source revolution.

I am loathe to offer real life suggestions based on Television and Movies...most often it indicates that one has less than a firm footing in their real world. In this case though, I am going to ask you to take the red pill. Together we will see how deep the Rabbit Hole goes.

Welcome to this year's third issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Continued efforts to resolve the leadership issues in Gentoo Linux, a controversy following the Manbo Labs deal between Mandriva and Turbolinux, and the unexpected purchase of MySQL by Sun Microsystems were the main headlines of the past week. But much has happened behind all the high-profile announcements too: openSUSE released the first prototype of its new, Qt4-based installer, Ubuntu published a free, 400-page desktop course, KDE continued to defend its decision to release version 4.0.0 in a seemingly unfinished state, and Dreamlinux announced the upcoming version 3.0 of its Mac OS X-like desktop distribution. Finally, don't miss our feature story, a hands-on report about Linux in Vietnam. Happy reading!

I suppose I have more than a casual interest in reviewing this book. The software development team I work with operates using agile development. Reviewing this book is for me, a way of becoming more familiar with the people I work with and how they work. I'm not a developer...not in the software sense anyway. They call me a developer of content and that's what I do...provide help files, white papers, and any other documentation to describe the products developed by the folks I work with. While I have had agile development explained to me and have seen it in action every workday of the week for the past two-and-a-half months, it will be interesting to see the "official" version presented by Shore and Warden.

The Everex Cloudbook, which seems like a compelling alternative to the Asus Eee PC, will be available in the US from around 25th of January, according to ZaReason, Inc.

Generally speaking it’s always nice if you can dedicate a few dozen minutes (around an hour I would say) to familiarize yourself with how bugs are reported in the project you’re participating with.

LXer Feature: 20-Jan-2008

With more computer manufacturers announcing their Linux pre-installed offerings and retailers announcing the availability Linux based computers in their stores, this week's Roundup should be called "Coming soon to a store near you". Lenovo is finally getting their Linux laptops to market, Acer makes a trial run of laptops with Ubuntu on them, Shuttle reveals a $200 Linux box, Sears has Freespire based PC's for $199 after rebate and Everex's 2 pound, $399 Cloudbook is coming to a Wal-Mart near you. Also, KDE 4.0 hits the streets and in a collection of Microsoft related articles McAfee "accidentally" forgets to read the license, Pamela Jones says goodbye to Mandriva and the EU opens two new investigations against Microsoft while Bill Gates offers free customized Windows Live services to Finland's primary and secondary public schools.

For all the linux users that saw the new OSx Leopard and the new backup utility called Time Machine and said “wow”! Now there is FlyBack.

Ohloh, the community site for developers, is making its tools open source, including the Web site itself. The Ohloh site collates information from public open-source version control systems, to create a database of the productivity of open source projects, and the developers working on them. A new "labs" section of the Ohloh site makes source code available, under the GPL version 2. This includes tools such as Ohcount, which counts lines of source code and can be used by companies to audit their software development teams.

GIMP is an open-source image editing program, one of the most popular image-editing programs. It is supported by a huge open-source community that is open in every aspect - development, source, sharing and participation. And what better way for me to admire GIMP than by presenting a list of some amazing, beautiful and stunning brushes?