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It is official! As of the 16th of October 2009, the United States Department of Defense recognizes Open Source software at Commodity, Off the Shelf (COTS) software, eligible for purchase, read implementation, under the purchasing rules of the Department.

Every one is waiting for the Final edition coming next days, but some links are already leaked. Koala will change your linux mind. and will give you the power of the opensource, and will give your the speed and the stability of your system. Please follow the links to download it now.

[It's not the final iso, just a daily build. Better wait for the official final release. - Sander]

As always, high hopes and expectations combined with the suspense of eager waiting inspire some creativity. Here are five interesting Chrome OS fakes that have come out in recent times.

Web application development reached a new paradigm with the release of Ruby on Rails back in 2004. Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson has since been at the helm of one of the most successful and popular open source software development projects. Ruby on Rails, or just Rails, has allowed thousands of developers to create complex applications rapidly in a consistent manner. This level of consistency and re-use of code Rails helped pioneer has also given rise to the concept of a Web application framework, where components are used for common tasks like database connectivity.

"Almost Live Comedy Show" was announced earlier this month as part of a major marketing partnership Microsoft had sealed with a wide range of News Corp. properties to promote the launch of the computer giant's Windows 7 operating system. As part of the deal, "Almost Live Comedy Show" was set to run commercial-free, with Microsoft marketing messages built into the special instead. But that was before Microsoft execs attended the special's taping Oct. 16. The program included MacFarlane and Alex Borstein -- the voice of "Family Guy" matriarch Lois -- pitching Windows 7.

Mobile WiMAX provider Clearwire Communications has announced plans to offer service in eight additional U.S. cities during the fourth quarter, for a total of more than 25 markets by year's end. In related news, Clearwire demonstrated international roaming via Aicent's WRX (WiMAX roaming exchange), and the Maravedis analyst firm said WiMAX subscriptions are increasing 74 percent year-over-year.

Microsoft has announced that it is offering documentation on the format of Outlook data files, known as PST files, under its Open Specification Promise, making the format free to use without licence or patent issues. In the past the file format, which is used to contain the email, calendar, contacts and other Outlook generated data, had to be reverse engineered to gain access to the information.

One of the realities that every standards professional must deal with is the sad fact that everyone else in the world thinks that standards are…

[Start over; no one else thinks about standards much at all. - Andy]

The future smartphone market will be driven by operating systems and user demand for functionality and "experiences" the phone can provide, according to industry analyst In-Stat. In a report released Tuesday, the research firm projected that there will be some 412 million smartphones worldwide by 2014, where over 250 million units will be equipped with accelerometers.

AMD has released a new driver for ATI Radeon-chipsets, version 9.10. This driver is suitable for 32bit, or 64bit Linux versions.

"Is it here to stay?" has to be one of the most common questions enterprise users ask when considering Open Source options for their business needs. It's a legitimate concern with any product, Open Source or not — who wants to deploy a mission-critical service one day and be told it's no longer in development the next? In a time when the corporate side of Open Source is a bit up and down, spreading strategic support around is itself mission critical.

You can have Windows Genuine Advantage, Microsoft's trust-no-one innovation, or you can have the advance KDE desktop, all full of polish and useful functionality. Bruce Byfield compares the two.

Miro previously called Democracy player is a cross platform internet television application developed by Participatory Culture Foundation. The latest release is Miro 2.5.3 and it comes packed with a lot of goodies. It's alternatives include Boxee and also XBMC which do really perform as good as Miro.

Microsoft proved that one thing Windows 7 won't install is a sense of humour yesterday, by hastily pulling out of its sponsorship of a Family Guy/American Dad variety special. The vendor announced two weeks ago that it would blow some of its Windows 7 marketing budget on "an upcoming television event devoted to the comedy of Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show".

Some have suggested that Googe's Android OS is a strategic move by Google to block Win Mobile marketplace success, but it seems that Microsoft is doing enough to harm its reputation without Google's interference.

The folks at open source collaboration platform MindTouch conducted a poll recently to get a sense of who open source executives think are the most influential people in the industry. More than 50 execs were polled from Europe and North America and no one was allowed to vote for anyone in their own company. The results were ranked according to the effect each nominee has on the open source industry, and some of the winners may surprise you.

FTP communication is not secure, all communication is plain text and can be easily captured. Despite this serious weakness, few do anything to secure it. There are simple ways to correct this with VSFTPD.

After a three month development period following the release of Phoronix Test Suite 2.0, the first beta release of Phoronix Test Suite 2.2 "Bardu" is now available for all of your testing needs on Linux, Mac OS X, OpenSolaris, and BSD platforms. Phoronix Test Suite 2.2 Beta 1 carries more than 200 changes since the release of 2.0 Sandtorg with many new prominent features being introduced, new test profiles added, and greater usability enhancements. In this article, we will go over some of the key improvements to be found in Phoronix Test Suite 2.2.

Red Hat is set to invest in EnterpriseDB, according to InternetNews.com. If true, the move accelerates EnterpriseDB’s momentum with big-name partners and also gives Red Hat a hedge against the pending Oracle-Sun-MySQL business combination that awaits regulatory approval. Here’s some more analysis.

Thought you were bleeding edge with your quad-core PC? Think again. A company called Tilera today announced that it's working on a chip containing 100 processor cores, which it says could be seen by 2011. It's part of its new TILE-Gx line of 64-bit multi-core processors, the first of which--a 36-core chip--will be sampling by the end of 2010, the company said today in a statement. With its top-end TILE-Gx100, Tilera claims to outstrip Intel's next-generation Westmere processor in performance-per-watt by a factor of 10. Other models will contain 16 and 64 cores, and will sample in early 2011.