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A chance to pose questions directly to Novell's regional manager, Peter Hunter is one of the highlights of the event that Cape Information Technoloy Initiative (CITI) are holding next week.

U.S.C.G. Intelligence Program Implements NetTop2 - Thin Client to Provide Access to JWICS and SIPRNET from a Single Desktop

Unless you have been living under a rock, by now most of you have likely heard about the trouble between Debian and Mozilla with regards to the Firefox logo. In many ways, the argument is stupid and valid at the same time.

On November 17, Boston University Law School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosted the "Software Patents: A Time for Change?" conference. A unique gathering of geeks and lawyers, the 10-hour conference consisted of a series of panels ranging from the perceived problems with software patents to possible solutions.

The website for the Saipan Linux Users Group or SLUG is already up, with website address http://groups-beta.google.com/group/saipan-linux.

[On behalf of LXer and Linux User Groups everywhere, I would like to extend a warm, hearty welcome to the newest penguinistas! - dcparris]

Earlier this year, members of Chinese and Taiwanese IT associations announced broad plans to work together to jointly develop and promote Linux as well as home-grown standards for certain IT components.

Sony has been saying that it sees its new next-gen machine, the PlayStation 3, as more of a computer than a console. Terra Soft Solutions is now making Yellow Dog Linux 5.0 available for download for the PS3, taking that idea a step closer to reality.

Beaverton, Oregon-based uXcomm, a provider of systems management platforms, said today that it is supporting the popular Nagios open source hosting, service, and network monitoring program.

Up until now, Mac OS X and Linux users had been left out of the social—that is to say they haven't been able to use the Microsoft Zune with their operating system. "Until now" because the library libmtp is actually able to read the Zune's crazy filesystem on other, non-Microsoft OSes. How big a deal is this?

[O.k., so if a loved one or acquaintance is unfortunate enough to receive one of these for Christmas, you might stand a chance of getting it to work with GNU/Linux. True, they'd be better off exchanging it for an iAudio, but hey... - dcparris]

The old bilingual switcheroo: Microsoft has taken another slap from the authorities in Korea, after a court decision in a patent dispute raised the prospect of Office being taken off the shelves in the country.

[The story addresses a patent issue. First, Miscrosoft threatens to withdraw Windows. Now the Koreans are threatening to pull Office off the shelves. There's more than one way to skin a cat - and the Koreans seem to be trying a few of them. - dcparris]

For nearly three years, I've resisted the temptation to turn my monthly visit to this soapbox into a mélange of punditry and prognostication. I've tried to stick mostly to hands-on experiences with Free Software, and to telling you how to get the most out of those offerings. But this month, two recent news stories have me itching to comment. So, welcome to the first-ever Free Agent grab bag column.

The Ubuntu Open Week starts today. From 5pm South African time a series of online workshops will take place. During the week participants can chat to Ubuntu developers and join an open Q&A with Mark Shuttleworth.

Global IT Consultancy, ThoughtWorks today announces the release of dbdeploy . An open source tool for developers and database administrators (DBAs), dbdeploy is a simple solution to the problem of managing and deploying database refactorings to development, quality assurance (QA), user acceptance testing (UAT) and production environments.

Open-source software is becoming ubiquitous, but companies need to be aware that its use must be carefully managed. Even Microsoft has admitted the attractiveness of this business model through its engagement with open-source companies such as SugarCRM Inc.and Zend Inc. Problems can arise because many open-source licenses require that users who incorporate open-source code in their software must make their code available for free (at reproduction cost), permit modifications of the software and permit redistribution without charging a fee.

The head of IT at the University of the Western Cape tells Novell he will do his utmost to develop an exit-strategy for all Novell products at the university. "Novell has let us down badly."

As a standalone office suite, OpenOffice.org lacks a back-end solution similar to Microsoft Office SharePoint, the software that integrates the office suite into a document collaboration and document management environment. Sure, there are applications that can handle both version control and user management, but until now, none of them offered seamless integration with OpenOffice.org that was easy enough for an average office worker to use.

OpenMoko jas announced the availability of a completely integrated open source mobile communications platform in partnership with FIC, a company who specialises in in motherboards, graphics cards, mobile solutions, and electronic devices. The announcement of the OpenMoko mobile communications platform coincides with the unveiling of FIC’s Neo1973 smartphone, which utilizes the full OpenMoko platform, and promised to be available in January 2007.

The HPC4U European research project active in GRID computing technologies just released the first freeware version of its fault tolerant grid middleware providing fault tolerance for parallel applications. This system, based on a Linux kernel running as MS Windows service (coLinux), offers the user the possibility to launch parallel application on virtual nodes in order to test fault tolerance mechanisms in action.

For anyone interested in the latest GPLv3 summary, but who didn't make it to the 5th international GPLv3 conference in Japan last week, a transcript of Richard Stallman's keynote has been published. Enjoy.

As the Web 2.0 bandwagon continues its rapidly accelerating path downhill towards the inevitable crash we find ourselves at another turning point in the development of the networked world. Ten years ago we were faced with a choice between the controlled homogeneity of the ‘information superhighway’ or the many and various delights of the unsupervised Internet, and we chose wisely.