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The controversy over Novell’s partnership with Redmond is nowhere near over, but the Free Software Foundation’s general counsel, Eben Moglen, says the patent provision of the companies’ agreements will be “dead” before April.

I just don't get it. Offering XGL and Beryl to the Linux masses is fantastic, don't get me wrong. However, I simply feel like too much emphasis is being placed on a “pretty desktop” versus functionality.

The development and sharing of open-source information may be the first arena where true collaboration among all the agencies in the intelligence community — a requirement in the post-9/11 world — takes hold. At least, Douglas Naquin, director of the Open Source Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is working hard to make it come true.

There you are, happily playing around with an audio file you've spent all afternoon tweaking, and you're thinking, "Wow, doesn't it sound great? Lemme just move it over here." At that point your subconscious chimes in, "Um, you meant mv, not rm, right?" Oops. I feel your pain -- this happens to everyone. But there's a straightforward method to recover your lost file, and since it works on every standard Linux system, everyone ought to know how to do it.

Yesterday night Zack Rusin made a guest appearance on The Linux Link Tech Show. He discussed recent developments in the X.Org project, Qt, KDE, his life in Norway and some other Open Source related issues. It is a lengthy interview that should satisfy those who say Zack's not blogging and responding to questions often enough.

The IBM BeepLite Networking Layer for C is an implementation of BEEP (Blocks Exchange Protocol), a generic application protocol kernel for connection-oriented, asynchronous interactions. It supports dynamic, pluggable application protocols for peer-to-peer, client-server, or server-to-server scenarios, allows multiple channels over TCP, and supports arbitrary MIME payloads including XML.

In this final report from the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS), held last week at Google's offices in Mountain View, Calif., we'll look at plans for the Ubuntu and Kubuntu desktops, the future of PowerPC, and how Ubuntu is working with local community teams.

The OpenVZ project, which maintains open source kernel patches aimed at enabling a single Linux system to host multiple "virtual server" environments, has added a virtual Ethernet device feature, along with a feature said to let admins migrate virtual servers between physical hosts without disrupting users or eating storage, among other touted advantages.

Microsoft and novell made big IT news on Nov. 2 by announcing a historic burying of the hatchet, the likes of which we haven't seen since Sun and Microsoft promised to work together on big interoperability stuff.

Having recently reviewed JavaScript Phrasebook by Christian Wenz for the Linux Tutorial site and Wesley Chun's Core Python Programming for Linux Magazine (due out in next month's issue), I was excited to get the opportunity to review the brand-new Python Phrasebook. Apparently Brad Dayley was also excited about writing this book as he states in the Introduction: 'I was excited when my editor asked me to write a phrasebook on the Python language. The phrasebook is one of the smallest books I have ever written; however, it was one of the hardest.'

This is the next article in our occasional series on new, more formal (mathematically-based) approaches to system development. The first article looked at Bayesian analysis and formal methods (which are only "new" to the general development space, of course).

Astronomers at New York City's Hayden Planetarium and Rose Center for Earth and Space think space exploration should be easily accessible to anyone. To make that possible, they offer an interactive atlas of the universe that anyone can download for free.

Samuel J. Palmisano, chairman, president and CEO of IBM, said Tuesday that technology service, the fastest growing segment in the technology industry, will be a top priority for his company in China, which is one of IBM's most dynamic markets. IBM achieved year-on-year growth of 27 percent in China in the third quarter, compared with a corporate average of 5 percent.

ParallelKnoppix is a modified Knoppix live CD designed for use in creating HPC clusters. You can start up PK on multiple nodes to run a cluster, and customize PK to add or remove applications.

The Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) has announced plans to host an Open Source Health Care summit as part of their upcoming 2007 conference, SCALE 5x. The focus of this event will be on the use of open-source software in the health care industry. The goal of this event is to foster an awareness of the availability of open-source options to medical organizations, private practices, and hospitals. The Open-Source Health Care Summit will be held on February 9, 2007 at the Los Angeles Airport Westin Hotel.

I'm remiss in blogging on the transition in Massachusetts as Louis Gutierrez leaves his position as State CIO (Gutierrez announced that he would resign a month ago), and as Mitt Romney wraps up his single term as governor and looks forward, he hopes, to bigger political games than our small state can offer.

In the past several years, I have encountered a variety of public utilities and municipalities that have fewer than 10 technical staff members. Each of these clients spoke with me about making the transition to the right enterprise GIS for their size organization. Typically, I prefer to drive requirements discussions away from technology and toward the functionality that the client needs to improve his business. However, most of my clients are decision makers who nearly always hold preconceived opinions about which would be the right technology to solve their particular problems.

Freescale is sampling an inexpensive PowerQUICC II network processor (NPU) with integrated hardware security engine (HSE), dual gigabit Ethernet interfaces, and USB 2.0. The MPC8313E targets residential gateways, 802.11n access points, piracy-protected media servers, line cards, intelligent NICs, and network storage devices, and an ultra-low power derivative will support printers.

This does not bode well for Linux gamers, and it's a weird coincidence that we hear about this a few days after announcing Wine on the site. It seems that Linux-using World of Warcraft players are getting banned left and right.

Everybody loves Ajax. Javaists, Rubyists, Pythonistas; even Microsofties get to play with Ajax in the form of Atlas. Book publishers love Ajax too, judging by the stack of new titles coming hot off the presses.