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Defcon 15 followed hard on the heels of the Black Hat Briefings last week. Black Hat closed at Caesar's Palace on Thursday evening, and Defcon started at the Riviera Friday morning. Both shows are the creation of Jeff Moss, but while Black Hat is aimed directly at the professional side of network security, Defcon is all about community, mad fun, hacking, and games.

Mind mapping, the practice of visually representing linked ideas in diagrams, is a controversial technique. Some people find mind mapping's branching trees and multiple colors to be a distraction from the main task of organizing ideas. Proponents counter that the resulting diagrams are concise, quick, and reveal patterns you might otherwise miss. Either way, GNU/Linux offers a number of such programs from which to choose. The most useful ones I've encountered are kdissect and VYM (View Your Mind). Both offer a powerful graphical interface, and both extend the concept of mind mapping by allowing you to attach text and graphics to a diagram and by supporting filters to export results into forms usable with other programs.

They've been in chains so long that they don't have the frame of reference to guide them into knowing the difference. Oh sure, some do...you are one of them. Chances are, you migrated away from Microsoft Windows into Linux as a full-time deal and haven't looked back. You "get it". They don't, but it's easy enough to get your point across quickly....some of us will get a perverse pleasure from this.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Work in Plasma, with extra sources for the Weather data engine, work on the applet browser, and the start of SystemTray and RSIBreak plasmoids and a "next generation" application launcher, named Lancelot. Cut-down versions of Korundum and Smoke libraries for writing scripted Plasma applets. More interface work for Amarok 2. More work on XESAM (a shared metadata specification) integration in Strigi. An Akonadi resource for Facebook information.

University Hospital Ghent uses .NET developers to build open-standards-based virtual information service center on WebSphere Portal

Microsoft's patent indemnity agreements with several Linux vendors are unsettling the marketplace, Ubuntu leader says.

Full Circle issue #3 has come out. An independent magazine for the Ubuntu community, it features handy how tos, a preview of Compiz Fusion and a review of Ubuntu on a Macbook and more.

OutKafe, a cybercafe management suite distributed under the free GNU/GPL licence, has just had version 5.2.0 released. Largely a feature oriented release, the release is recommended for all current users.

No one would have believed me if I had said five years ago that Microsoft would have a page on its Web site called “Open Source at Microsoft” with the following remarkably sane and reasonable statement on the subject:

The Scottish Open Source Awards opens for nominations and entries on 1st August 2007 at 9AM. The awards are open to business, government, education, not-for-profit, charities and students, who contribute to or use Open Source Software or services.

Monitoring Proftpd Server Using phpftpwho

I'd like to invite you to read the last of three articles from the "Dump Windows" saga of writings. Two previous articles (part I, part II) stirred up quite a controversy and a variety of opinions. With this article I'm hoping for calmer and more meritorious responses. In the last article of this series we will touch on the aspects of work and usefulness of the console, remote access, logic behind the OS, pricing, and TCO.

Help, I have a problem that I can't sort out.

It seems we mostly hear the term "Open Source" bandied about in the press. Save for the occasional references to the Free Software Foundation and FSF Europe, one might get the impression that the Free Software movement is floundering along, all but forgotten in the annals of history. In reality, though, the Free Software movement is very much alive and kicking.

Welcome to this year's 31st issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The late Sunday release of Arch Linux 2007.08 provided some excitement on the otherwise quiet distribution release week, during which both Fedora and Mandriva failed to deliver the promised first development builds of their upcoming products. But on the distro news front, things were a lot more exciting: MEPIS has announced that it will switch to a Debian base before its next stable release, Ubuntu has published a detailed analysis of Automatix, Kevin Carmony has announced resignation from Linspire, a Swedish manufacturer has unveiled the world's cheapest laptop (running Fedora), and Ian Murdock has given some hints about Sun Microsystems Project Indiana in an interview. We also take a quick look at the current status of KNOPPIX and Gentoo and publish some interesting statistical data about the DistroWatch readership in Latin America and the Caribbean. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the recipient of the July 2007 DistroWatch donation is the FreeNAS project. Happy reading!

Howto upgrade kernel(2.6.22-9-generic) in Feisty Fawn

Grafpup 2.0 is a compact Linux distribution based on Puppy Linux and aimed at graphics professionals. It offers a variety of options for installation, a custom set of configuration utilities, and a niche suite of applications for digital artists. The graphics are soothing, and the Openbox desktop runs smoothly even on older hardware. Despite a few problems, Grafpup is a good choice for graphic designers and writers on the go.

Some entertaining lguest documentation discussed in an earlier story was merged into the mainline kernel with the commit message, "the netfilter code had very good documentation: the Netfilter Hacking HOWTO. Noone ever read it. So this time I'm trying something different, using a bit of Knuthiness." Both Netfliter and lguest, as well as the documentation for both, were written by Rusty Russell. He describes the lguest driver as, "a simple hypervisor for Linux on Linux. Unlike kvm it doesn't need VT/SVM hardware. Unlike Xen it's simply 'modprobe and go'. Unlike both, it's 5000 lines and self-contained."

In an interview today with Linux-Watch, controversial Linux leader Kevin Carmony confirmed rumors that he had resigned as CEO of desktop Linux vendor Linspire on July 31. Carmony said he plans to work on several of his own business projects, and on Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.

Once upon a time there was a prosperous and entrepreneurial port city namedEMR. EMR had many ships and many ship owners who ferried lots of people to the healing spas that existed in nearby mountains. Unfortunately for the ships and passengers, the harbor was quite rocky and treacherous. Shipwrecks were common with large and grievous losses of life. Many of the entrepreneurs in the city thought that EMR could benefit from a modern marvel called alighthouse.