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Microsoft needs to get rid of its chief IP lawyer and its patent strategy if it wants further efforts at interoperability to be taken seriously by open source vendors and users. In at least two interviews with IT publications this week, Horacio Gutierrez reaffirmed that the company intends to try and force open source companies to sign patent licensing deals or face lawsuits.

As much as I like Opera 9.5, I have started using Firefox 3.0.3 as my default browser. It almost makes me feel guilty, because I really do like Opera. It’s a slick little browser that I still use it at times and who knows, I may go back to using it full time at a later date. However, Firefox 3 has won me over for the time being. Something my brother said sums it up. With Firefox 3, you can add as little or as much customization as you want or need and for me, that makes it a winner.

For an awful lot of people their first encounter with a computer will invariably be Microsoft Windows. This straight away creates a barrier against considering alternate operating systems because they look different to what the user has been accustomed to. Here's how to paint a Windows facade over Linux and remove that obstacle.

A 43-year-old Japanese piano teacher's sudden divorce from her online husband in a virtual game world made her so angry that she logged on and killed his digital persona, police said Thursday. The woman has been jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data.

The Fedora Project is in the final throes of testing version 10 of its Linux distribution, and is regularly releasing "snapshot" updates to Fedora 10 beta. This article takes you on a graphical tour of the installation and desktop of Fedora 10 beta, snapshot 2.

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory A true classic and one of the most played online first-person shooter games, Wolfenstein: ET was supposed to be released as a new mod for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but the single-player part of the game was abandoned and it was released at no cost, as a standalone multiplayer game.

Wine is the project which makes possible to run games like World of WarCraft, Counter-Strike, Half-Life 2, WarCraft III and so on. And Wine is also the project which makes possible for web developers to test how their web page is viewed under Internet Explorer. Not to mention hundreds of other applications which work very well or well enough with it.

If the beginning bores you, jump to 3 minutes 5 seconds in. Hilarious :) For this week's attempt to find even more Linux, Unix and/or computer-related humour on the web, I ran across an entertaining 4 minutes of video called "Unix: What the heck is it?" It's attached to this post, below, but is also available on OrienteeringPro's YouTube Page.

For the past 26 weeks I’ve been producing the Bizarre Cathedral strips for Free Software Magazine. Every one of them is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commerical-Share Alike (BY-NC-SA) licence. Recently I’ve received a few pieces of mail saying this is a “non-free” licence and questioning my use of it here. Some of them are quite polite, others have demanded I change the licence immediately (presumably “or else”). I’m not going to change the license, and here’s why. Read Ryan Cartwright's reasons for his non-free licence at Freesoftware Magazine.

Organisation of Camp KDE 2009 is now moving at full speed and the event website is now active. The organisers are now releasing a Call For Presentations (CFP) and a Call For Sponsorship (CFS). Camp KDE 2009 was recently announced on the Dot and will be held in Negril, Jamaica from January 17-23, 2009. We are excited to continue the momentum of KDE interest shown at the 2008 KDE 4.0 Release Event in California. This new conference will be held at the Travellers Beach Resort in Negril.

Since I'm keeping my Self-Reliant Thin Client running all the time, every morning that there are new updates to Debian Etch, I seem them right away. We had three yesterday and three more today (for my architecture anyway): libmyspell3c2, linux-image-2.6.18-6-486, tzdata.

Delays to the latest version of Intel's project putting an open-source stack on its Atom processors have not deterred IT companies from early backing for the platform. Start-up Good OS has announced a relationship with MiTAC International to deliver its gOS Gadgets Linux operating system on a netbook based on Intel's Moblin 2.0.

Want to combine your love for robots and strange mini-ITX systems with your interest in furthering educational opportunities for U.S. schoolchildren? You, too, can bid on this strange, one-of-a-kind Linux system available only through a charity auction on eBay.

This is one of those heroic days where I keep my nose to the grindstone even though my life is falling apart and I do not want to work-- my dog went missing this morning. Naturally she is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill mutt. Layla is the smartest, prettiest, best dog on the planet, and I say this with a complete lack of bias. See for yourself in this charming photo of Firecracker and Layla taken on our last hike. How can you not love dogs who swim across rivers whether you want them to or not? And then pose for photos on picnic tables?

Canonical has finally freed the Ibex. The first release candidate for Ubuntu 8.10 ("Intrepid Ibex") is available for download or in-place upgrade by 8.04 ("Hardy Heron") users, according to a post to the Ubuntu Announce mailing list by Steve Langasek, release manager. In addition to regular old Ubuntu, release-candidate versions of Kubuntu, Xubuntu, UbuntuStudio, and Mythbuntu are also available, according to Langasek's post.

With two weeks having passed since the Linux 2.6.27 kernel release, Linus Torvalds has closed the merge window for the next kernel (Linux 2.6.28) and he has pushed out the first release candidate in this next series.

I have my Self-Reliant Thin Client running Debian Etch turned on all of the time. I haven't been able to find power-usage specs for the Maxspeed Maxterm (it could be a 5300, but there are no model numbers on the box), but with no moving parts, a Mini-ITX-size motherboard, Mini-ITX-type fanless power supply and fanless VIA C3 Samuel CPU, as well as non-working case fan (except when tilting said case at a 45-degree angle) and a Compact Flash chip instead of a spinning hard drive and no optical drive, the thing is totally silent and must be fairly sparing on electricity use. I don't think I even moved the mouse yesterday, but today when I brought it out of screen-saver mode, there were three updates to Debian Etch.

This is WFTL Bytes!, your occasiodaily FOSS and Linux news show for Friday, October 24, 2008, with your host, Marcel Gagné. Today's stories include a nod from those great people at CommandN, open source DRM, how to get VC funding for your open source project, FOSS in Russian schools, and the cost of creating Linux.

Amazon announced Thursday general availability of its Elastic Compute Cloud, part of the Internet retailer's Web service offerings. Launched in beta 26 months ago, the service provides a resizable compute capacity to businesses with varying server needs."The appealing thing about EC2 is that instead of buying a server, you pay for it by the hour," said Frank Gillett, a Forrester Research analyst.

The essence of the FreeNAS server is to provide storage that is easily accessible from the network. To this end, it is important to understand how FreeNAS handles hard disks and how they can be configured and used to provide the best and most reliable storage for your network.