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Can anyone beat Microsoft when it comes to churning out insecure products? Ladies and gentleman, may I introduce you to Adobe.

Today we are happy to report that we are ready for the next phase in our mission to establish a more effective voice supporting the use of free and open source software in the U.S. Federal government. Since our launch more than 1,250 individuals and organizations have joined OSFA and that is what we would like to discuss with you today.

Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin says that mobile convergence will boost Linux adoption because the open source operating system is the ultimate enabler of consumer electronics.

A comparaison has been done between the latest versions of the 5 most popular web browesrs: Mozilla Firefox 3.5, Google Chrome 3.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0, Opera 10.0, Apple Safari 4.0. see the complete results

The issues of customization and upgradeability are often in conflict. Software developers and systems administrators need to address both issues inter-accommodatively. I cite three examples to show how FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) is leading us toward an ideal of "eternally regenerative software administration".

Three months after Intel completed its acquisition of embedded OS and tools firm Wind River, we spoke with Wind River's Linux chief Vincent Rerolle about life as a subsidiary. Rerolle also describes how mobile Linux device stacks are accelerating a services focus for the company's embedded Linux business.

I was recently contacted by a person called Graeme Cobbett. In his email he told me he got his Windows license refunded and donated that money to Linux Mint. Of course, as you can imagine, he felt pretty happy about it and he wanted to let people know how he did it.

There is a lot of buzz in the tech media world about the upcoming Ubuntu Karmic Koala release, but it's not the only Linux release on its way from a major vendor. Novell's community-driven openSUSE project is nearing completion of its next major release, version 11.2 The first release candidate for openSUSE 11.2 was released this week and includes the latest Linux 2.6.31.3 kernel, social networking support and the inclusion of the GNOME 2.28 desktop, among other new features. While both the latest GNOME and KDE desktops are part of the openSUSE 11.2 release, the KDE desktop will now become the default choice for desktop GUI instead of GNOME. The move to make KDE the default choice is not seen by openSUSE as a shift, but rather a choice for users.

Akaza Research is pleased to announce the release of OpenClinica 3.0, the newest version of the world’s most popular open source electronic data capture (EDC) software for clinical trials. This latest production release marks a significant milestone for open source software in the clinical trials field, adding a host of new capabilities designed to further accelerate the adoption of open source into mainstream research.

When you need to offload photos from a digital camera onto your computer, you can do this using the default browser, a photo management application, or a dedicated tool like Rapid Photo Downloader.

Home automation may sound like a science-fiction dream, but in reality it is not only commonplace, but relatively simple to get started, especially with Linux. Smart control of household appliances and utilities begins at the low end with plug-and-play radio frequency (RF) and powerline modules and relays that can easily interface with a small home server in charge of scheduling and monitoring. At the high end, a home automation setup may include environmental controls, home security systems, and many other add-ons, which--despite the name--are important concerns for businesses as well as residential customers.

My favorite card game is Krypto. Eons ago when I was a youngun, you could buy this game from Edmund Scientifics, and can still find it on Amazon and other online nooks and crannies. The game is simple: there is a deck of 56 cards numbered 1-25. Each player is dealt five cards, and there is one common objective card in the middle. Players have three minutes to use each of their cards once to form the number on the objective card.

Hulu Desktop is now available for Linux. Ars puts it to the test on Ubuntu 9.04. Although it's extremely resource intensive, it's reasonably acceptable for a beta.

One of the things I love to hear about is success stories of Linux in education, especially in the K12 arena. Early adoption and exposure to Linux and Open Source has the very positive effect of opening the horizons of these students to the vast array of options available to them. But the number of instances that you hear of in regards to actual full on Linux and Open Source adoption in schools is few and far between, even though the number of schools supporting both is on the rise, albeit slowly. That's why I was very pleased recently to hear about a local school just southwest of where I live that had taken to living life with the penguin.

If you are a scientist and KDE user, you may already have been impressed by the range and quality of specialist software available for your use. But you may not be aware of the scientific graph plotting applications LabPlot (stable KDE 3 release with a KDE 4 version in progress) and SciDAVis (Qt4). The two projects have announced a collaboration to share common backend code to accelerate their development. We contacted the developers to get their take on their applications, the collaboration and the future of their projects. Read on to find out about the future of free software plotting.

In Part I of this OOXML update, my first post on the topic in over a year, I showed you how Microsoft maintains strong control over the OOXML standard. Despite their earlier promises that control of OOXML would be handed over to an independent, international committee, a look at attendance records reveals that the committee that maintains OOXML (JTC1/SC34/WG4) consists mainly of Microsoft employees, who outnumber any other company or organization on the committee 10-to-1.

When Cairo Dock v2.0 was out, it instantly became my favourite dock for Linux. Unfortunately, some Intel and ATI graphic card users were not able to run it in OpenGL mode (which is what's amazing about Cairo Dock). If you were among them, this is going to be great news for you: Cairo Dock in OpenGL mode now works with the very latest OpenSource drivers for ATI and Intel video card.

According to Harald Welte, the source code for the Palm Pre GSM model, currently being sold in Europe is now available from the opensource.palm.com site. Earlier this week, Welte pointed out that the source code for the new model of the Palm Pre was not available to the public, as it should be to comply with the terms of the GPL. An email to Welte from Palm has now confirmed the availability of the code for WebOS 1.1.2 and 1.1.3.

Cisco is keeping close tabs on the Asterisk open source IP PBX market. On the upside, Cisco spent time at Astricon promoting VoIP phones and other systems that link into Asterisk. But over time, Cisco will need to closely evaluate its Asterisk strategy. Here's why.

The Ubuntu 9.10 ("Karmic Koala") beta won a positive review from eWEEK, while InfoWorld reports on the server edition's capability for developing private clouds that are compatible with Amazon EC2. Meanwhile, ArsTechnica found the developer's version of Ubuntu Moblin Remix to be "promising" but "rough."