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The logic bomb episode at Fannie Mae is an illustration of the destruction that's possible when enterprises fail to properly monitor user privileges. IT managers must be aware of who has what privileges and determine the appropriate level of access for all users.

We are certain that many of you want to try Linux to see what it is like, but have no idea where to start or how to get into it. This article is the first installment in a four-part guide that will gradually introduce you to the Linux environment and how to adjust to it if you are a new user. One of the hardest things to do while starting out is finding a distro that is right for you. Many users try several before settling on one of two that they really like. Once they find a distro that feels right, they are often reluctant to switch unless the distro becomes unsuitable for their needs for whatever reason.

Microsoft filed suit against TomTom today, alleging that the in-car navigation company's devices violate eight of its patents -- including three that relate to TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel. It's believed to be the first time Microsoft has filed a patent suit over Linux, after claiming for years that elements of the open-source operating system violate its patents. However, Microsoft says open-source software is not the intended focal point of the action. Five of the alleged patent violations relate to proprietary software.

[Maybe we will finally get to see some of those 200 or so patents Microsoft keeps (not) talking about. - Scott]

Project Oekonux researches the economical, political and social forms of Free Software and similar forms of production we collectively call peer production. In Project Oekonux, different people with different reasons and different approaches get together to build something new. A lot of participants want to know, whether and if so, how, the peer production can serve as a basis for a new society.

Linux certainly has established itself as a prominent server OS these days, pushing Unix into the background. But the open source OS shares the stage with commercial software giant Microsoft, which remains a dominant player with Windows Server. Gartner research published this month found the server OS market shaping up as a battle between Windows Server and Linux. Gartner in other research also has found both OSes on a growth track in terms of revenue. "There still seems to be plenty of robust interest in deploying on Windows, but Linux is still very key," says Gartner analyst George Weiss.

This morning, Mountain View-based startup Appcelerator is taking the wraps off its second Preview Release for Titanium, an open-source developer platform meant to compete with Adobe AIR and the likes for building rich internet, mobile and desktop applications. Titanium PR2 comes with a number of new features that are worth taking a look at, like an extensible Module API and built-in support for Linux and a wide range of programming languages like Python, Ruby and JavaScript in addition to C++. More technical details are outlined on the company blog Appcelerant.

Mark Shuttleworth, the founder and leader of Ubuntu, recently announced the next version of Ubuntu - Karmic Koala (v 9.10) will improve the Ubuntu experience on netbooks.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said on Tuesday that he still wanted to form an alliance with Yahoo to combat the dominance of Google in search advertising. But in his annual forecast to financial analysts of Microsoft’s plans for the year, he ruled out any revival of last year’s aborted deal to purchase Yahoo.

No high concept today. Just straight up information... maybe with an attitude - we hadn't finished writing the post before we wrote this lead.

Google wants to join Mozilla in the European Commission case against Microsoft regarding its bundling of Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system. Earlier this month Mozilla's Mitchell Baker said that "Microsoft's business practices have fundamentally diminished (in fact, came very close to eliminating) competition, choice and innovation in how people access the Internet." In a post on Google's Public Policy Blog, the Vice President of product management, Sundar Pichai, details why they requested to join the proceedings as an interested third party.

[Look who's joining the party? - Scott]

It's not like we haven't almost begged Time Warner and others to give us a hand here. We've presented plans to help local residents budget themselves into full subscription plans...all we asked for is a reduced rate to start with. They didn't have the courtesy to write us a PUAR letter. That's fine...we'll find a way to go around them.

Location, privacy and web standards: as the first alpha and beta releases of Fennec, Mozilla's mobile browser, come out, Mozilla VP Jay Sullivan tells us the phone isn't a separate world any more.

Ubuntu 9.04 is getting closer and closer to the final release and we thought that it would be nice to give you guys a sneak peek at some of the upcoming features. One of these new features was introduced with tonight's updates and it is a brand new login screen a.k.a. GDM (GNOME Display Manager) theme, which is black and has a nice Ubuntu logo in the right bottom corner. The new login screen is entitled "Human" and it was created by Kenneth Wimer and Mat Tomaszewski for Canonical.

The day of the mold-your-own OS has come, and Linux is the clay. Linux provides free and open access to the source for the OS itself. Developers are free to tailor a custom Linux -- even down to the level of the kernel itself. You can trim away drivers, services, and other OS components unneeded by the task for which the custom distribution will be targeted.

As phishing messages go, it was never likely to be the most successful. A high ranking member of the British Government asking his friends for 3000 bucks because he had lost his wallet while abroad? I don’t think so.

This guide presents an introduction to Firewall Builder. Firewall Builder (also known as fwbuilder) is a GUI firewall configuration and management tool that supports iptables (netfilter), ipfilter, pf, ipfw, Cisco PIX (FWSM, ASA) and Cisco routers extended access lists. Both professional network administrators and hobbyists managing firewalls with policies more complex that is allowed by simple web based UI can simplify management tasks with the application. The program runs on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Windows and Mac OS X and can manage both local and remote firewalls.

There's no doubt that more and more scrutiny is being applied to patents around the world, with particularly hopeful moves in the US in the wake of the Bilski judgment. So it's a wise move on the FSF's part to turn up the pressure with their EndSoftwarePatents.org campaign.

Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer had some interesting things to say yesterday about which companies Microsoft sees as its competitors in the client operating system space. You'd think Apple was their number one competitor - and you'd be wrong. Microsoft sees two other competitors as their primary adversaries.

The UK government has published an updated policy on open source in government. The new policy takes a more aggressive position on government use of open source than the original policy, published in 2004. That document set out five policy points that allowed open source based solutions to be considered alongside proprietary solutions and tried to avoid lock in to proprietary software. The new policy document notes how the 2004 policy has already had effects, such as 50 per cent use of Apache web server within departmental web sites, and the NHS "Spine" migration to a Linux based infrastructure, which will cover 35 per cent of NHS organisations.

What to say to your children when they can no longer use windows on the PC A comment in an earlier post 10 cool things you can do with linux and not with windows stated that it would be a big challenge to find 10 advantages of linux for kids. Well lets give it a try, 1. What to say if your kids can't play there favorite windows games anymore.