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I've been doing an awful lot of writing about Flash lately. Not that I'm an expert, which is one of the reasons I'm reviewing this book. I find myself thrown into situations that require more of me than I currently possess; at least in terms of certain experiences. Like most people, I have an idea what Flash is and what it does, but am (or was) not so sure how Flash works. To answer my questions and to learn more, I decided to go to school.

C-SPAN covered a talk given at the New America Foundation promoting the newBest Care Anywhere. Thepanel featured the books author Phillip Longman as well as Kenneth W. Kizer, MD. No mention of theunderground railroad that I could tell (corrections welcome). You candownload the video from CSPAN. Does anybody know how to get this video to play under GNU/Linux?Fred Trotter

This week on Open News Microsoft Plays The Patent Card, Toshiba Has Linux Envy, and Mono Sheds Silverlight on Linux.

In 2000, when Theresa Friday, Ray Waldin, and Jeff Luszcz were working for dot-com startup Cacheon, they saw firsthand the power of open source software to impact a business model. In Cacheon's case, it looked like open source had dealt a death blow to the company, but it was really careless use of third-party code that was the source of the trouble, Friday says. The three colleagues were so impacted by what they had seen that they launched a new business designed to help other companies prevent implosion from software licensing issues.

Jerry Rosenthal, chief executive officer of Open Invention Network, issued the following statement today: "A recent article in Fortune Magazine raises - or more precisely, re-raises - tired, old allegations about the Linux operating system for the sole purpose of perpetuating unwarranted fear, uncertainty and doubt among current and potential Linux users and distributors.

Tiny Tiny RSS (TT-RSS) is an excellent little Web-based RSS aggregator that, despite its tiny size, sports some clever features, including an AJAXified interface, a multiuser mode, tags, content filtering, and a lightweight interface for use with mobile devices.

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz has blunted whatever public niceties existed between his company and Microsoft with a revealing attack on Redmond's lawsuit threats around open source software.…

Unlike a typical Linux get-together, at the Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM), half of the attendees are developers and the other half are artists. The conference, which was held earlier this month at the Polytechnique Montréal, featured speakers from as far as Australia and Europe. In three rooms, speakers presented techniques for everything from generating photorealistic vector drawings to producing full movies to magazine production.

The OSHCA Conference 2007 is shaping up to be the best and biggest yet. Presenters and participants are attending from around the globe.

Recent Microsoft partner Novell today distanced itself from the Redmond giant's claim that free and open source software violated more than 200 of the company's patents.

Webcast to tap expertise of GPLv3’s chief legal counsel to evaluate effect of new license on enterprises

Linus Torvalds, lead developer of the Linux kernel, has a sharp retort to Microsoft executives' statements in a Fortune magazine article that Linux and other open-source code violate 235 Microsoft patents.

A Microsoft move to seek patent royalties from open-source distributors and users may be an attempt to use legal threats to deflect attention from company problems. Microsoft Corp.'s aim to seek patent royalties from open-source distributors and users may be an attempt to use legal threats to deflect attention from larger questions surrounding its business, including lack of interest in new versions of core products and lackluster profit from new wares.

XGI Technology is still in business, but what has happened to them? We once saw hope in them for providing discrete graphics processors to take on the NVIDIA and ATI duopoly, but they have since discontinued their Volari 8 series. While they're no longer producing these desktop chips, they remain an active player in the server and embedded graphics industry -- accompanied by their open-source driver

Despite its claim to own 42 patents used in the creation of the Linux kernel and hundreds more embedded in other free software programs, Microsoft does not plan to take a page from The SCO Group and sue users of the open source operating system, a senior company official said Monday. "We're not litigating. If we wanted to we would have done so years ago," said Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's VP for intellectual property and licensing, in an interview.

Open-source supporters are thumbing their noses at Microsoft's claim that it will seek royalties from users and distributors on 235 patents it holds for technologies in Linux and open-source software, saying they are not worried about being the target of litigation for patent infringement.

This article addresses reasons some in the community may have not to support the Tux500 project and explains why supporting it may be worth it.

I did go through the public database that exist over patents. Did a search for all IBM patents. I did find a wopping 98000 patents. Did slowly read a page and think if i could connect Microsoft windows vista and XP to any of them. About two hours later 50 is connected and thats just the start.

LXer Feature: 15-May-2007

A new database ("counterFUD") was released in 2005 at LXer showing patent numbers where parts of Microsoft might infringe upon.

[Note: This is an old LXer story, but I posted it again, since the topic is hot again, and included some new comments - hkwint ]

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." - Bill Gates, Challenges and Strategy Memo. 16 May 1991, almost forecasting 'patent armageddon'

MOC is a console-based (build on ncurses library) audio player for Linux/BSD. It’s very easy to use, fast and functional so basically it has all the features of a decent player except for a fancy GUI. What is more — it takes a fraction of system resources consumed by most popular GUI players but still plays all popular formats „out-of-the-box”.