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The Dutch Ministry of Finance organized an architecture competition for which a selected group of architectural offices (unstudio, nox, ...) and artists were invited, including myself. The goal of the competition was not to design a building, but the new 5 euro commemorative coin with the theme 'Netherlands and Architecture'. The winner will be rewarded with a nice price, but most of all with the honor: his design will be realized and will be a legal coin within the Netherlands.

Ubuntu, the most popular distribution, is using by default Gnome 2.24 as its Desktop Environment (DE). However this isn't the only DE available for Linux. Another very popular DE used by many Linux users is KDE (K Desktop Environment). Recently KDE has reached version 4.1.2. KDE4 is based on Qt4. The centerpiece is a redesigned desktop and panels collectively called Plasma which replaces Kicker, KDesktop, and SuperKaramba by integrating their functionality into one piece of technology.

More ways to recover your Linux or Unix terminal session, with reader contributions! If you're one of the many readers who submit a comment now and again (and even if you aren't ;), today's post is an homage to your helpful and insightful suggestions and tips. Some of you reading this right now may have emailed me with something that deserves to be posted as a comment to another post, and I can say, with great confidence, that it eventually will.

Upon seeing 17 software updates waiting for me on my Debian Etch box this morning, I hurried over to the Debian security site and learned that the Debian security team issued a flurry of patches on Oct. 29, 2008, for all versions of OpenOffice. On my system, this is a relatively huge 101 MB download.

You might the recall the ongoing uproar over the BBC's dissing of its non-Windows-using viewers, its defective math on how many Linux users were among their viewers, the nasty DRM-encumbered iPlayer, and their general bad attitude about being willing to buy into DRM-restricted streaming media, even though they are a publicly-funded broadcaster...But thanks to FOSS (as always) there is a silver ray in the gloom-- Ubuntu 8.10 includes the Totem BBC Plugin:

Netbooks have been slowing down over the last year and for the most part, each one is about the same thing with a different logo on the lid. HP’s offerings seem refreshing and polished even though they sport the standard netbook specs of 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 8.9-inch or 10.2-inch display, up to 2 GB of RAM, and either a 60GB HDD or 16GB SSD. The solid-state drive can be complimented by a standard USB thumb drive in a special slot for extra storage. The specs are only half the story as the OS is where it gets interesting.

Worried about someone breaking into your house in your absence? Or just need to keep a tab on who enters your room while you are away? Well, all you need is a webcam, a linux PC/laptop and a twitter account. And you are set for real time updates through twitter about all that goes on at your abode behind your back (can even receive a text message/sms on your phone). Keep reading for the very simple setup you need.

In the last few years, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) has undergone a major transition from GCC version 3 to version 4. With GCC 4 comes a new optimization framework (and new intermediate code representation), new target and language support, and a variety of new attributes and options. Get to know the major new features and their benefits.

The Metasploit Project develops a set of security tools to create and execute exploit code on remote computers. Some people say Metasploit makes the job easier for black hat hackers who attack networks looking for vulnerabilities to take advantage of; others says the tool helps network security administrators do a better job of finding and repairing weaknesses before the bad guys get to them. H.D. Moore, the 20-something creator of the Metasploit Project, says it all depends on your perspective.

Ubuntu 8.10 (codename Intrepid Ibex) has been released! For those who don't know anything about it, Ubuntu is the most popular and widespread Linux distribution now used. No surprise Ubuntu has the most page hits among all other distributions! This has been achieved because of its easy installation process and its large community willing to help Linux newbies or n00bs. Many users have already upgraded their 8.04 Hardy Heron to the newest version but it is more than sure that even more users are going to try it through its Live CD and install it on their computers.

The developers of the free panoramic photo editor Hugin released version 0.7 this month, culminating a two-year development cycle. The new release incorporates key new technical abilities and usability improvements to help demystify the panorama creation process for the average shooter. The 0.7 release is available from the Hugin project's Web site in the form of a universal binary for Mac OS X and a source tarball for Linux and Windows. Binaries for Windows are expected to arrive "soon." Hugin is also provided through the package management systems of most major Linux distributions, several of which have been supplying beta releases of 0.7 during the long run-up to the final release.

One of the new features in Ubuntu 8.10 is the ability to create an encrypted directory for content you do not want others to access. Oh, by the way, did you know that anyone can read your files that are in your home directory? Here is an example of sue logged in and able to open files in mike's home directory. However, note that they are opened read-only so they cannot be changed. Still, who is looking at your stuff?

BTRFS (pronounced better FS) is currently under development in an effort led by Oracle engineer Chris Mason. With the support of Intel(NASDAQ: INTC), Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), HP (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), BTRFS could become the engine that brings next generation filesystem capabilities to Linux. "The main goal is to let it {Linux} scale for the storage that will be available," Chris Mason Director of Linux Kernel Engineering at Oracle told InternetNews.com. "Scaling is not just about addressing the storage but also means being able to administer and to manage it with a clean interface that lets people see what's being used and makes it more reliable."

Microsoft is reaching out to open-source and adding a dash of RIA bling to its latest model-driven development crusade. The company has released M, its new programming language for building textual domain-specific languages (DSLs) and software models using Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) under its Open Specification Promise (OSP). Specifically, Microsoft has released MSchema, MGrammar, and MGraph. OSP lets third parties implement a Microsoft specification without getting a nasty phone call from the company's lawyers.

A. Lizard takes us on a tour of secure remote graphical Linux administration over the Internet; through firewalls, routers, dynamic home IP addresses, Wake-on-LAN, and other perils. We will learn how to securely administer both Linux and Windows remotely. The journey begins with today's part 1 of three parts.

Kickstart allows you to do automatic Fedora/RedHat/CentOS installations. This is useful and time-saving if you have to deploy tens or hundreds of similar systems (e.g. workstations). Kickstart reads the installation settings from a Kickstart configuration file. The problem with Kickstart is that it usually uses the distribution's packages from the time the distribution was released, i.e., it does not consider updates which means you would have to update each system manually after the Kickstart installation. This guide explains how you can do up-to-date Kickstart installations with the help of a tool called novi.

Open Source desktops are far cheaper to maintain than proprietary desktop configurations, says Rolf Schuster, a diplomat at the German Embassy in Madrid and the former head of IT at the Foreign Ministry. Schuster was one of the participants in a discussion on Open Standards and interoperability that took place last week Tuesday during the Open Source World conference in the city of Malaga, Spain.

Microsoft and Google both announce support for OpenID, except that Google's version has users and advocates up in arms. And Microsoft looks to have got it right.

Many people use SSH to log in to remote machines, copy files around, and perform general system administration. If you want to increase your productivity with SSH, you can try a tool that lets you run commands on more than one remote machine at the same time. Parallel ssh, Cluster SSH, and ClusterIt let you specify commands in a single terminal window and send them to a collection of remote machines where they can be executed.

The final version of OpenOffice.org 3, the open source competitor to Microsoft Office, came out two weeks ago and looks better than ever. I've been using its predecessors for years and, broadly speaking, OO3 is the most useful, widely compatible software ever. You can run it on anything: Macs, PCs, Linux, Unix workstations.