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If you could ask Bill Gates one question, what would you ask? I spent an hour today with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on the company's Redmond campus. I chose to ask Bill about Microsoft's intellectual property stance against Linux and its open source developers, from the SCO Group's litigation against IBM to Steve Ballmer's recent claim Linux infringes on Microsoft patents after signing a patent indemnity with Novell. Bill Gates claimed he had never heard of BayStar Capital, an investor in SCO Group and their litigation against large corporate supporters of Linux.

Bugreport for December 15, 2006

Christopher Hallinan examines the bootloader’s role in a system, followed by an introduction to some common features of bootloaders. He also takes a detailed look at a popular bootloader used for embedded systems, and introduces a few of the more popular bootloaders.

It's no secret that Linux needs parental controls installed with a distribution by default, and it’s been a necessity for a long time now. Advanced users have always pointed to Dans Guardian, but they are delusional if they believe that most people have the time or the ability to implement this great resource.

This tutorial shows you how to jumpstart your CakePHP application using scaffolding and Bake. You will also learn the ins and outs of using CakePHP's Access Control Lists (ACLs).

It's often difficult to figure out the motivation behind a particular study - until one finds out who has commissioned and paid for it. The so-called tech consulting companies would love it if the consumer believes that they have conducted an "independent" study. The worrying thing is that not many people blow their cover.

WebSphere consultant Roland Barcia answers questions on building Web 2.0 applications with AJAX technologies on WebSphere.

Those among you who'd like the chance to win a Reg goodie bag should take a few minutes to complete our survey on Configuration Management Databases - known as CMDBs to their mates - which form the focus of our latest tap into the expertise of you, our beloved readers.

The Free Software Foundation have pledged $60 000 to the Free Ryzom campaign in order to help purchase the online game and release the software under a GPL.

The first live CD release candidate of Damn Small Linux 3.2 was made available this week, only two weeks after the release of version 3.1. The v3.2 release candidate sports a 2.4.26 kernel and the Fluxbox window manager in a tidy, 49.8 MB package. Damn Small Linux is a thumb-drive-sized Linux distribution that, despite its minuscule size, strives to be a functional and easy-to-use desktop.

Good documentation has helped keep the two-year-old Ubuntu project among the most popular Linux distributions. To complement the traditional venues for help, such as FAQs, HOWTOs, bulletin boards, and mailing lists, Ubuntu uses interactive forums such as Internet Relay Chat to conduct training classes for new users. Now add UbuntuClips.org to the list of helpful sites. This project, not associated with Ubuntu, combines the best of Linux screencasting tools and video-sharing portals to offer audio/video clips that lead new users through common tasks.

Health-IT news articles usually follow a perennial pattern of loud hype followed by quiet failure. If what was at stake were not so important, the never ending raft of optimistic and un-critical press releases and articles about 'progress', 'advances' and 'announced plans to' would be a cause for amusement, guffaws and occasional cavorting at the lemming-like behavior of so many organizations and journalists touting the next big thing.

A relatively obscure virtualization system has leapfrogged better-known rivals to make its way into an upcoming Linux kernel. KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) has been accepted by kernel gurus such as Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton for inclusion in version 2.6.20 of the Linux kernel, developers said earlier this week. The system consists of a loadable kernel module and a user component, and is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

The OpenOffice.org project team has rev'd its popular open-source office suite all the way from v2.0.4 -- released in October -- to v2.1, available as of today. "OpenOffice.org 2.1 is recommended for all users, as it represents a significant improvement over all previous versions," the project team said.

We interrupt our normal operations in order to bring you this special report from /dev/kernel-ops. OK, wait. I just made that up as an example of what happens when a device on your PC wants the processor, in hardware terms, or the kernel, from a software point of view, to do something. To signal the processor that it needs something done, the device turns on the appropriate IRQ, short for Interrupt ReQuest. The kernel takes care of business by satisfying the request, then turns the IRQ off again.

LXer Feature: 15-Dec-2006

Markus Feilner's book, OpenVPN is an excellent book for experienced administrators. While newbie admins will learn plenty, there is one important caveat.

SCALE 5X, the 2007 Southern California Linux Expo to be held at the Westin Los Angeles Airport Feb. 10 and 11, has opened for attendee registration. Early bird registration runs through Jan. 24, an event spokesperson said. Participants are invited to attend more than 40 seminars and tutorials.

Nokia's 770 Internet Tablet is more than a Linux-based device; a recent software update made it a handy VOIP device. John Littler examples how the upgrade works and walks you through setting up VOIP and Asterisk.

Open-source software, once seen as the province of propeller heads and anticapitalist visionaries, is winning the respect of the most clear-eyed capitalists of all: the venture capital community.

[It's not so much anti-capitalist as pro-freemarket, but anyway... - dcparris]

The Open Source Development Labs hosted the third Desktop Architecture Meeting in Portland, Ore., last week to continue discussions on how to move the Linux desktop forward. More than 40 developers were in attendance, from organizations such as Hewlett-Packard, X.org, Red Hat, Nokia, Intel, OpenWengo, AMD, Xandros, Linuxprinting.org, and many several others.